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Poor Man's Cake
(England.) Rub 1 pint of flour with a piece of butter the size of an egg, well together, add 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder to the flour first. Beat 1 whole egg with 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of sugar, pour these into the flour and butter, and flavor with lemon or nutmeg. Bake in a moderate oven, and cut in slices. Ice with sugar icing, if desired.
A plain one-egg cake of the kind kept for everyday tea rather than company. The measurements are by volume in the old style, and the batter is looser than most modern cake batters.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume here: 1 pint is 2 cups, roughly 9 oz of all-purpose flour. Spoon it into the cup rather than scooping, since a packed cup will make the cake dry.
- Butter the size of an eggThe standard nineteenth-century shorthand for about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. That is a low proportion of fat for a cake, which is the point of the name.
- Rub, don't creamThe method is a pastry method rather than a creaming method: the butter is rubbed into the dry flour before any liquid appears. Work it to fine crumbs, then add the wet mixture and stir only until no dry flour remains, or the crumb turns tough.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to 2 cups of flour is still the standard ratio, so no adjustment is needed. Turn-of-the-century baking powders were mostly single-acting, so a modern double-acting powder gives a little more lift and more tolerance of delay before baking.
- A moderate oven350F. The recipe gives no pan or time: an 8-inch square pan, buttered, will need roughly 30 to 40 minutes, a loaf tin longer, in either case until a skewer comes out clean.
- FlavoringLemon means grated zest or a few drops of extract; nutmeg should be freshly grated, about a quarter teaspoon. Pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its aroma within months.
- Sugar icingFor a cake like this, confectioners' sugar slaked with a little water, milk or lemon juice, adding the liquid a spoonful at a time until it pours; roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons to a cup of sugar. Spread it while the cake is fully cool.
- YieldOne loaf or one 8-inch square, cutting into eight to ten slices. It is best on the day it is baked and stales quickly, as low-fat cakes do.
"Poor man's cake" is a family of thrift cakes found across British and American cookery, defined by what they leave out rather than what they contain: one egg instead of four or six, a scrap of butter instead of a half-pound, and chemical leavening in place of long beating. The name attaches to many different formulas, some eggless, some butterless, some using only sour milk and soda. The heading "(England.)" suggests the book arranged its dishes by country, so a modest tea cake sits alongside grander continental pastries. The rubbing-in method it uses is older than creaming and comes out of the pastry tradition, which is why the result eats somewhere between a cake and a sweet scone loaf, meant to be cut in slices and buttered or iced.