Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Pound Cake (II)
Pound Cake (II)
Mrs. Charles Rogers.
One cup of butter, one cup of sugar, four eggs beaten separately, one and one-half cups sifted flour; mix butter and sugar to a cream, then put in yolks beaten light, the flour and whites last.
A compact, unleavened butter cake that relies entirely on air beaten into the butter and the whites. The original assumes you know your own oven and your own tins, so the missing details are the ones worth supplying.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here, so every bit of rise comes from creaming and from the whipped whites. Beat butter and sugar until visibly pale and fluffy, five minutes or more, and fold the whites in gently at the end rather than stirring them through.
- Cup sizesA nineteenth-century household cup is close enough to 8 fl oz for this to work as written: about 8 oz butter (two US sticks), 7 oz sugar, and roughly 6 oz flour once sifted, though period cups varied. The recipe calls for sifted flour, so sift before measuring or the cake turns heavy.
- FlourThe soft winter-wheat flour common in this period was generally weaker than modern all-purpose. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup swapped for cornstarch, will give a closer crumb.
- Not a true pound cakeThe classic formula is a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. This version cuts the flour to about three-quarters and leans on separated eggs, which makes it lighter and slightly more fragile than the name suggests.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 325-350F, suits a rich butter batter; hotter and the outside sets before the center rises.
- Pan and timeThe batter suits a 9x5-inch loaf tin or a small tube pan, buttered and floured; it may overfill a smaller 8x4. Expect 50 to 60 minutes in a loaf, less in a shallower tin; test with a skewer at the center.
- YieldAbout ten slices. Wrapped, it keeps well, and many cooks prefer it on the second day.
Pound cake takes its name from the simplest formula in English baking: a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, recorded in English cookery books well before the nineteenth century and easy to remember. By the time books like this one were compiled, the ratio had loosened into something a cook adapted to what she had, and separating the eggs was one common way of lightening a rich batter. The attribution to Mrs. Charles Rogers is typical of community collections, which were often compiled as fundraisers with each contributor's name attached to her own recipe.