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Delicate Cake
Mrs. Charles Rogers.
One-half cup butter, one cup sugar, one cup sifted flour one-half cup corn starch, one-half cup milk, one teaspoon of Cook's Friend baking powder, four eggs, using the whites only.
This is an ingredient list rather than a set of instructions, which was normal in community cookbooks of the 1870s — the method was assumed. Here is what the assumptions were.
- The method it takes for grantedCream the softened butter with the sugar, add the milk alternately with the sifted flour, cornstarch and baking powder, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Folding the whites in at the end is the hinge: beaten into the batter early, they deflate and the cake loses the fine, close crumb that makes it "delicate."
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand widely sold in the late nineteenth century. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes one for one.
- Cornstarch in the flourReplacing a third of the flour with cornstarch lowers the protein and produces a softer, more tender crumb — the same trick used to fake cake flour today. If you use cake flour throughout instead, keep the cornstarch out or the cake will be crumbly.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F.
- Pan and timingThe batter fits one 8-inch round or a small loaf pan, greased and floured. Expect 30 to 35 minutes; it is done when the centre springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Cup measuresNineteenth-century cups were not standardised, and a Canadian book of this date may be working in imperial measure, where a half-pint is 10 fl oz rather than the 8 fl oz of the American convention. Sift the flour before measuring, as the recipe specifies, or you will add appreciably more than intended.
- Yield and servingEight to ten slices. White cakes of this kind were often iced with a boiled or plain water icing, or split and filled with jam.
- The leftover yolksFour yolks are the by-product. Yolk-based cakes such as gold cake and boiled custards were the usual way of using up whites-only leftovers.
The Home Cook Book was compiled by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and published in 1877, with proceeds going to the Hospital for Sick Children; it is generally described as the first substantial Canadian fundraising cookbook, and like its American models it credits each contributor by name — here Mrs. Charles Rogers. "Delicate cake" was a standard nineteenth-century term for a white cake made with egg whites only, the delicacy being both the pale colour and the fine crumb; the cornstarch is a mark of the 1870s and 1880s, when refined corn starch was newly cheap and heavily advertised for baking, and "corn starch cake" appeared under that name in dozens of household books. The naming of a proprietary leavener, Cook's Friend, is equally of its moment: chemical baking powders were still new enough that cooks specified brands they trusted rather than assuming any tin would behave the same.