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White Sponge Cake (II)
Mrs. Ira Metcalf.
Whites of eight eggs, one and a-half tumblers white sugar, one of flour, one teaspoon of cream of tartar, flavour to taste, bake in flat tins, and if you choose, ice with "chocolate icing" No. 1; cut in diamond shapes.
This is an angel-cake batter in all but name: whipped whites, sugar, flour and cream of tartar, with no butter and no chemical leavening. Everything depends on the meringue, so read the whipping and folding notes before you start.
- The hinge: the whites carry the whole cakeBeat the whites with the cream of tartar to firm, glossy peaks, then add the sugar gradually and fold the sifted flour in by hand in three additions. There is no baking powder here; any air knocked out is gone for good.
- TumblerA tumbler is usually reckoned at about a cup (8 fl oz), though the actual vessel varied from kitchen to kitchen. On that basis, roughly 1 1/2 cups sugar (about 300 g) and 1 cup flour (about 120 g). The whites of eight large eggs come to about a cup as well.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period was often softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour may give a closer result, and the flour is best sifted two or three times before measuring in either case.
- Cream of tartarIt is doing two jobs: stabilising the meringue and keeping the crumb white. It is not a leavener on its own here, since there is no soda to react with.
- Flavour to tasteVanilla, almond extract or lemon zest, about a teaspoon. Avoid anything with fat in it, such as a rich extract base or citrus oil in quantity, as fat deflates a meringue batter.
- Flat tins and the ovenUse ungreased shallow sheet or jelly-roll pans. The book gives no oven setting; a moderate oven, say 325-350F, for 20-30 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean, suits a batter of this kind.
- Cooling and cuttingLet the sheet cool in the pan before loosening the edges with a thin knife. Ice with the chocolate icing, then cut into diamonds with a long blade wiped clean between cuts.
- YieldPerhaps one half-sheet pan, or two 9-inch square tins; somewhere around 30 to 36 diamonds depending on how you score them.
- The eight yolksReserve them for a gold cake, custard or mayonnaise. Period cookbooks often print white and yellow cakes close together, and leftover yolks are one likely reason.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled "by ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold for charity, following the model of the Chicago fundraising cookbooks of the same decade; the recipes carry their contributors' names, as this one carries Mrs. Ira Metcalf's. White cakes built entirely on egg whites became fashionable in North America in the 1870s and 1880s, and the closely similar formulas that appear under the names white sponge, silver cake and angel food are usually linked to two things: plentiful refined white sugar and the spread of the rotary egg beater, which made a stiff meringue from eight whites quicker work than a hand whisk. The habit of publishing a white cake beside a yellow one is generally explained by household economy, the yolks left over from this recipe going into the next.