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White Cake
Mrs. George Virtue.
Beat one-half pound fresh butter to a cream, equal weight sifted sugar and dried sugar, the yolks and whites of eight eggs separately whisked, two ounces candied orange peel, one-half teaspoonful of mace, a glass of brandy, one pound flour stirred in by degrees, one and one-quarter pounds of currants, four ounces of powdered almonds; bake two hours.
A rich English-style fruit cake in the pound-cake tradition: no chemical leavening, so all of the lift comes from the creamed butter and the separately beaten eggs. The proportions are given by weight, which makes it easy to scale once you sort out the archaic bits.
- The hinge: eggs are the only leaveningWhisk the yolks in with the creamed butter and sugar, then fold the whites in last, alternating with the flour so the batter is never beaten flat. Deflate the whites and you get a dense, greasy brick rather than a cake.
- "Equal weight sifted sugar and dried sugar"The line is garbled and genuinely ambiguous, since "dried sugar" simply repeats the sugar already named. "Dried flour" is one possible reading, though a pound of flour is specified separately. The safest working reading is half a pound of sugar, to match the half pound of butter.
- A glass of brandyIn these books a "glass" is a wineglass, roughly 2 fl oz (1/4 cup). Not a modern tumbler.
- CurrantsZante currants — small dried grapes — not fresh red currants. One and a quarter pounds is a lot of fruit for a pound of flour; toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Powdered almondsBlanched almonds ground fine, i.e. almond flour or almond meal. Four ounces is about a cup, loosely packed.
- Oven and panNo temperature is given because none could be. A cake this rich wants a slow oven, 300-325F, in a deep pan generously sized for a very large batter and lined with buttered paper or parchment. Tent the top with foil or paper if it colours before the centre sets.
- Two hours means test itTwo hours at 300-325F is about right for one deep cake, but ovens and pans vary. A skewer into the centre should come out clean and the cake should have stopped sizzling faintly at the edges.
- Yield and keepingThe listed quantities come to something over four pounds of batter, so expect a large cake. Like all heavily fruited butter cakes it improves after two or three days wrapped tightly; the brandy helps it keep.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," with proceeds going to the Hospital for Sick Children — which is why nearly every recipe carries a contributor's name, as this one carries Mrs. George Virtue's. The title puzzles modern readers, since the cake is packed with currants and candied peel: in nineteenth-century usage "white cake" is often said to have distinguished a batter built on butter, white sugar and pale flour from the "black cake" or "dark fruit cake" darkened with molasses, brown sugar, treacle and heavy spicing, though the term was also commonly used for a cake made with egg whites alone. Mace, candied orange peel, brandy and ground almonds all point back to the English rich-cake tradition that Canadian and American households inherited more or less intact.