Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Plain Sponge Cake
Plain Sponge Cake
One egg, one teacup of sugar, one cup of sweet milk, two cups and a-half of flour, one dessert spoon of butter, two teaspoons cream of tartar, one teaspoon of soda, and a little salt. Bake fifteen minutes in pans size of a breakfast plate.
A one-egg plain cake of the cream-of-tartar-and-soda era, baked thin and fast. The measurements are period ones and the oven temperature is left to the cook.
- The hinge: work quicklyCream of tartar and soda begin reacting the moment they meet the milk, and there is no baking powder's double action to hold anything in reserve. Have the pans greased and the oven hot before you mix, and get the batter in without delay.
- Teacup and cupIn books of this period a "teacup" generally indicates something smaller than a "cup", often reckoned at about 6 oz, though the usage was not standardised and some compilers used the two words interchangeably. A workable reading is 3/4 cup sugar with 1 cup milk and 2 1/2 cups flour; expect a thick, lean batter.
- Dessert spoonA dessert spoon is 2 teaspoons, so the butter is about 10 g. This is a genuinely low-fat cake; it will taste plain and stale quickly.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh, unsoured whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that many recipes of the day called for. Do not substitute buttermilk here, as the soda is already balanced against the cream of tartar.
- Leavening equivalenceTwo teaspoons cream of tartar plus one teaspoon soda is the usual 2:1 ratio of the period. Because commercial baking powder is diluted with starch, substituting it takes more than the same volume: on the standard conversion this comes to roughly 4 teaspoons of baking powder.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. For thin layers in fifteen minutes, use 375-400F; the cake is done when the top springs back and the edges pull from the pan.
- Pans and yield"Pans size of a breakfast plate" points to shallow round tins of about 7 to 8 inches. The quantity will make two thin layers; the recipe does not say how they were to be finished.
- Not a sponge in the modern senseWith one egg and chemical leavening, this belongs to the family of plain milk cakes rather than to the whisked-egg sponges. Expect a fine, close crumb, not an airy foam.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in the 1870s from recipes contributed by ladies of Toronto and other cities, with proceeds going to charity, and it is generally described as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook of its kind. Its cake chapter belongs squarely to the moment before commercial baking powder had swept the field: cooks bought cream of tartar and soda separately and combined them themselves, a habit that persisted in household books for decades after mixed powders became available. The name "sponge cake" appears to have been used loosely in such collections, covering anything light and plain, and a one-egg version like this one shows the economy expected of an everyday cake, with eggs and butter used sparingly and milk and flour carrying the bulk.