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German Konglauffe
Beat 10 ounces of butter with 1/4 pound sugar, which has mixed with the zest of a lemon and a little nutmeg. Add 4 ounces of flour and 2 eggs, well beaten. Work these well together, add 3/4 pound more flour, 2 whole eggs, and the yolks of 4 one by one. Add finally 3/4 ounce of yeast, dissolved in 1/2 cup of milk. Butter a mould, line it with chopped nuts, and pour in and bake 1 3/4 hours. Turn out, serve in slices, with cream sauce or melted jam.
This is a Gugelhupf — a rich yeast-raised ring cake — written in the compressed style of a cook who assumed the reader knew what to do with a yeast dough. The two things the text leaves out are the rise and the oven temperature.
- The rise is missing, and it mattersNothing here says to prove the dough, but with 3/4 ounce of yeast it cannot go straight into the oven. Expect to let the finished dough rise in the buttered mould until it has grown by about half, roughly an hour to ninety minutes in a warm room, before baking.
- Weights in modern terms10 oz butter is 2 1/2 sticks; 1/4 lb sugar is about 1/2 cup; the flour totals 4 oz plus 3/4 lb, or 1 lb — around 3 1/2 cups. With four whole eggs and four extra yolks and only 1/2 cup of milk, this is a stiff brioche-type dough, not a pourable batter, despite the word "pour."
- Yeast3/4 ounce means compressed fresh yeast. Substitute roughly 2 3/4 teaspoons of instant dry yeast, or one and a half packets of active dry, softened in the warmed milk.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A cake of this size and richness wants a moderate oven, 325-350F. If it browns too fast on the fluted ridges, tent it with foil.
- Baking timeOne and three-quarter hours may reflect the slower, less even heat of an older range. In a modern oven at 350F a 9- to 10-inch tube mould is likely to be done in 45 to 60 minutes; go by an internal temperature of about 190F rather than the clock.
- The mould and the nutsA fluted Gugelhupf or Bundt mould, generously buttered, then the chopped nuts (almonds are traditional) pressed into the butter so they form the crust when the cake is inverted. Butter every crevice or the nut coating will stay behind.
- Yield and servingOne large ring, 12 to 16 slices. It is a coffee cake more than a dessert; the cream sauce or warmed jam suits it on the first day, and any leftovers toast well.
The Gugelhupf — spelled Kugelhopf, Kouglof, and as here Konglauffe, depending on which side of which border the cook came from — is the great ring cake of Austria, southern Germany and Alsace, and its name is generally traced to gugel, an old word for a hood or cowl, describing the tall domed shape of the mould. The fluted earthenware or tinned copper mould was a fixture of central European kitchens well before baking powder existed, which is why this version is leavened entirely with yeast and enriched with butter and yolks in the manner of a brioche. The terse continental phrasing has been reproduced intact, rise and oven heat left to the cook's judgement.