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Jelly Cake (III)
Mrs. H. Baird.
Three eggs, a small teacup of sugar, one cup of flour, whites and yolks of the eggs beaten together; flavour, and bake in two layers, in a quick oven.
A bare-bones sponge in the 1870s manner: eggs, sugar, flour, nothing else. Everything depends on how long you beat the eggs, since there is no baking powder, butter or liquid to fall back on.
- The hinge is the egg foamBeat whole eggs and sugar over gentle warmth or at high speed until pale, tripled and thick enough to ribbon off the whisk, five to eight minutes with a mixer. That foam is the only leavening; fold the flour in with a spatula in three additions and stop as soon as it disappears.
- A small teacup of sugarVictorian teacups generally run smaller than a modern measuring cup, and 'small' suggests less still. Take it as roughly 3/4 cup (150 g) sugar to 1 cup (125 g) flour, adjusting to taste; the original leaves the quantity genuinely loose.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period was often softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, gives a closer crumb.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. For layers this thin that is about right, but watch them: 8 to 12 minutes in two greased and floured 8- or 9-inch tins, out as soon as the centre springs back.
- "Flavour"The cook is expected to choose. A teaspoon of vanilla, or the grated zest of a lemon, or a few drops of rose water were the usual options; lemon suits the jelly filling best.
- Where the jelly comes inThe recipe never says, which is why it is called jelly cake. Cool the layers, then spread about 3/4 cup of tart jelly or preserves between them; currant, quince and raspberry are all jellies the period kitchen would have had on the shelf.
- YieldOne two-layer cake, thin by modern standards, serving six to eight. It is best the day it is made; with no fat in the batter it stales fast.
Jelly cake was a plain household cake of the American 1870s: two or three thin sponge layers with jelly between, no icing, no butter, and nothing that could not be got from the hens and the preserve shelf. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women, is generally cited as among the earliest American charity cookbooks, which is why so many entries carry a signature like Mrs. H. Baird and so little else. Contributors wrote for readers who already knew what a quick oven felt like and that a jelly cake got jelly, so the instructions record only what distinguished one woman's version from her neighbour's: the number of eggs, the size of the teacup, whether the whites went in separately. This one is notable for the shortcut in plain sight, beating whites and yolks together rather than whipping them apart.