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White Mountain Cake (Whites of eight eggs beaten)
Whites of eight eggs, beaten to a froth, one cup each of butter, corn starch, sweet milk, three cups sugar, three cups flour, two teaspoonfuls baking powder.
This is an ingredient list rather than a method, which was normal for a cake every reader of 1900 already knew how to mix. The order given is the order of work: cream the butter and sugar, add the milk and the sifted dry ingredients alternately, then fold in the whites last.
- The hinge: fold, don't beatThe eight whites are the only structural lift beyond the baking powder, so they go in at the very end and are folded through in a few strokes. Stir them in like liquid and the cake bakes dense and low.
- "Beaten to a froth"Probably a softer standard than the stiff peaks we aim for now: foamy, just holding a shape. Whites beaten dry and grainy will not fold into a stiff batter without breaking.
- Sweet milkFresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from the soured milk or buttermilk used in soda-leavened cakes. No substitution needed.
- Corn starchOne cup replaces part of the flour to weaken the gluten and give a fine, tender, very white crumb. Modern cornstarch behaves the same; sift it with the flour rather than adding it separately.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons of baking powder for four cups of dry ingredients is on the low side by current practice, which runs closer to a teaspoon per cup of flour. Turn-of-the-century baking powders were also often single-acting, so get the batter into the oven promptly once mixed.
- OvenThe recipe gives no baking direction; a moderate oven of about 350F suits it. Three greased and floured 9-inch layers take roughly 25 to 30 minutes; the same batter in two deep 9-inch pans or a large tube pan 45 to 55 minutes. Test with a skewer in the center.
- Yield and finishingA large cake — roughly three generous layers, 12 to 16 servings. White Mountain cake is traditionally finished with boiled white icing, a hot sugar syrup beaten into egg whites; a plain buttercream will taste right but will not give the snowy look the name promises.
- The leftover yolksEight of them. Period cookbooks often point the cook toward using yolks up in a gold cake, custard, or salad dressing.
White cakes built entirely on beaten egg whites became a fixture of American baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, once reliable chemical leavening and cheap, finely refined white sugar made a pale, fine-grained crumb achievable in a home kitchen — whiteness was the point, and the mark of good ingredients. The name is generally traced to the snowy appearance of the cake under its boiled icing, with a nod to the White Mountains of New Hampshire; the same icing is still sold in recipe books as "White Mountain frosting." Its placement here among "Dainty Dishes" reflects the era's view of such cakes as company food rather than everyday baking, and the recipe's terseness reflects a second habit of the period: household books listed proportions and trusted the cook to know the rest. The cornstarch is the era's clever touch, a cheap way to soften strong nineteenth-century flour.