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Lemon Cake
One and one-half cupfuls granulated sugar, one-half cup of butter creamed in sugar, three eggs, one-half cupful of milk, two teaspoonfuls baking powder, in two and onehalf cupfuls sifted flour. Filling for Same-The juice, and half the grated rind of one lemon, one egg, and one cupful of sugar, one tablespoonful of flour. Put in a cup and stir together. Set in a kettle of boiling water, stir until it thickens.
A plain creamed-butter layer cake with a lemon curd filling cooked over water. The original gives no pan size, temperature or time, all of which need supplying.
- Pans and yieldThe proportions suit two 8-inch round layers or three thin ones. Expect 8 to 10 servings.
- OvenA moderate oven, 350F. Two 8-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes; thin layers 18 to 20. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- Mixing order"One-half cup of butter creamed in sugar" means cream butter and sugar until pale, then beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the flour and baking powder alternately with the milk. The batter is stiff for a layer cake by modern habit; that is correct here.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons in two and a half cups of flour is a little under the modern rule of about a teaspoon per cup, but it works. Powders of the period were single-acting and began to react as soon as they were wet, so get the batter into the pans and into the oven without delay.
- The filling is a curdEgg, sugar, flour and lemon juice stirred in a cup set in boiling water is a bain-marie. Keep the water at a bare simmer and stir constantly; direct heat or a hard boil scrambles the egg. It thickens in roughly 8 to 10 minutes and should coat a spoon.
- A cup is small for the jobOne egg, a cup of sugar and a lemon's juice come to more than a teacupful before cooking even begins. Use a heatproof bowl over the pan instead, and whisk the flour into the sugar first so it does not lump.
- Cooling and assemblyThe curd is loose while hot and firms considerably as it cools. Chill it before spreading, or it will run out from between the layers.
- LemonsOne lemon may give 3 to 4 tablespoons of juice. Half the grated rind is roughly a teaspoon and a half of zest, and grating only the yellow keeps out the bitter pith.
Lemon cake of this kind belongs to the American family of creamed butter cakes that spread through household manuals after chemical baking powders became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century; the same base batter, with different flavourings and fillings, appears under several names in books of the period. The filling is a stirred lemon curd, cooked over water because gentle indirect heat was the surest defence against curdling on a range whose temperature could not be read, and because acid and egg were better kept away from unlined iron or tin. Lemons were an imported fruit that became steadily more affordable through the nineteenth century as citrus shipping improved.