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White Sponge Cake
One cupful of sugar, one cupful of flour, whites of ten eggs, one teaspoonful cream tartar.
This is an ingredient list rather than a method, which was common in period cookbooks where the technique was assumed. What is described is essentially an angel food cake, and the whole thing stands or falls on how the whites are handled.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder, no soda and no fat. The whites must be beaten to firm but still glossy peaks, and the sifted sugar and flour folded in by hand so the foam is not knocked down. Overbeaten, dry whites break up during folding and the cake bakes dense.
- When the cream of tartar goes inAdd it to the whites once they are frothy, before they hold shape. It acidifies the foam so it whips higher and stays stable, and it keeps the crumb white rather than ivory.
- Flour measureMany cookbooks of the period sifted flour before measuring, which gives roughly 100-115 g rather than the 125 g of a modern scooped cup, though practice was not consistent from book to book. Sift it two or three more times with part of the sugar so it disperses without lumps.
- Ten whitesAbout 1 1/4 cups, or 300 g, from large eggs. Bring them to room temperature first; cold whites will not reach full volume.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction at all. Bake at 325-350F. Higher than that sets the crust before the interior has risen and the cake sinks.
- Pan and coolingUse an ungreased tube pan; with only a cup of flour a 9-inch is the safer choice. The batter needs to climb the sides, so grease is fatal. Invert the pan the moment it comes out and leave it upside down until stone cold, or the cake collapses under its own weight.
- TimingRoughly 35 to 45 minutes. It is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out dry; the cake will also pull very slightly from the tube.
- What is missingNo salt and no flavouring are given. A pinch of salt with the whites and a teaspoon of vanilla or a little lemon or almond extract folded in at the end are consistent with other recipes of the period.
- Yield and the yolksOne tube cake, about 10 servings. Ten yolks are left over: custards, mayonnaise or a gold cake are among the uses period books suggest for surplus yolks.
White cakes built entirely on beaten egg whites spread through American home cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and by 1900 many general compilations carried a version under some name -- white sponge, silver cake, angel or angel's food. Two things are usually credited with making them practical for ordinary households: the geared rotary egg beater, which shortened a long arm-breaking job to a few minutes, and cheap finely milled white flour, with cream of tartar -- a byproduct of winemaking -- available as an ordinary grocery item rather than a druggist's article. The cake also fitted the period's taste for food that looked delicate and expensive. It came with a built-in domestic problem, ten spare yolks, and cookbooks of the era often printed yolk-heavy gold cakes to use them up.