Union Cake (and some Gluten Free Recipes!)
Union Cake
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| Union Cake |
Today, February 12th, being Abraham Lincoln's birthday, it seemed particularly apt that we bake Union Cake. A Presidential birthday celebration was not my original goal, circumstances just aligned nicely to work out that way.
HISTORICAL FOOD FORTNIGHTLY CHALLENGE #3: History Detective
For this challenge, you get to be the detective! Either use clues from multiple recipes to make a composite recipe, or choose a very vague recipe and investigate how it was made.SELECTING A RECIPE
I spent a number of weeks reading old cookbooks trying to find a recipe that I found puzzling and appealing enough to make. For my primary source I chose Moore's Rural New Yorker, an agricultural weekly paper from the area of Rochester, NY. As I read the various issues, I found myself getting caught up in the responses from the readers. Emily sends her method of heeling and toeing a stocking and asks for a good frosting. Mrs. Kingman of Medina, NY, sends her receipt for Indian pudding in response to a letter. And since the timing of this challenge was going to end at Lincoln's birthday, and Lincoln was certainly a man who rose from the general population, I thought it would be nice to use a recipe that came from the common people.I pondered White Face Cake:
"The whites of three eggs; one cup of white sugar; half cup of butter; half cup of sweet milk; one teaspoonful of cream tartar; half one of soda. Flavor with lemon." (Moore's Rural New Yorker, May 4, 1861)
The lack of starch puzzled me. I wasn't sure how you could make a cake without flour or an equivalent grain.
Another recipe - this time for Pork Cake:
"Thirteen ounces of clear fat pork, chopped fine, - after chopping, pour on one pint of boiling water to dissolve it, - then add two cups of sugar; one of molasses; one tablespoonful of soda; one of cloves; one of cinnamon; ten cups of flour; one pound of raisins, seeded and chopped." (Moore's Rural New Yorker, May 4, 1861)
This could have been intriguing. Assuming the pork fat is lard, not muscle fat, it could could be somewhat similar to making a cake with oil rather than a hard shortening (butter, shortening, etc). But the thought was just not appealing enough.
Pie Melon pie, while intriguing, was going to prove impossible to source the ingredients for.
" Pare and stew the melon, remembering to put in very little water, as the melon is very juicy. For each pie use one dessertspoonful of cream tartar, a piece of butter the size of an egg. Sweeten, and season with nutmeg to your taste. Bake with two crusts. (Moore's Rural New Yorker, April 4, 1861)
According to an issue from 1859, pie melon came from Japan. A blog, The Gardener's table, places its origin in Africa, and mentions it growing in the Southern states. (http://agardenerstable.com/2012/12/26/for-the-last-preserves-of-the-year-the-humble-citron-melon/) The melon seems to be a type of watermelon that is green inside. Its virtue is that it cooks into a gelatinous mass. In addition, the editor's comment on pie melon was that it had no taste of itself, only being a carrier for the good things you added to it. Since pie melons are not common in my grocery, this recipe was not viable.
The vast majority of the recipes in Moore's Rural New Yorker are for baked goods. I chose Union Cake from the March 2, 1861 issue.
Several things intrigued me - first, the addition of a half cup of cornstarch and second, the lack of directions. This bare listing of ingredients with no instructions is very typical for recipes of this time period. There is an assumed body of common knowledge that you, the cook, are expected to know, and there is no sense wasting time or space writing those down.
The lack of starch puzzled me. I wasn't sure how you could make a cake without flour or an equivalent grain.
Another recipe - this time for Pork Cake:
"Thirteen ounces of clear fat pork, chopped fine, - after chopping, pour on one pint of boiling water to dissolve it, - then add two cups of sugar; one of molasses; one tablespoonful of soda; one of cloves; one of cinnamon; ten cups of flour; one pound of raisins, seeded and chopped." (Moore's Rural New Yorker, May 4, 1861)
This could have been intriguing. Assuming the pork fat is lard, not muscle fat, it could could be somewhat similar to making a cake with oil rather than a hard shortening (butter, shortening, etc). But the thought was just not appealing enough.
Pie Melon pie, while intriguing, was going to prove impossible to source the ingredients for.
" Pare and stew the melon, remembering to put in very little water, as the melon is very juicy. For each pie use one dessertspoonful of cream tartar, a piece of butter the size of an egg. Sweeten, and season with nutmeg to your taste. Bake with two crusts. (Moore's Rural New Yorker, April 4, 1861)
According to an issue from 1859, pie melon came from Japan. A blog, The Gardener's table, places its origin in Africa, and mentions it growing in the Southern states. (http://agardenerstable.com/2012/12/26/for-the-last-preserves-of-the-year-the-humble-citron-melon/) The melon seems to be a type of watermelon that is green inside. Its virtue is that it cooks into a gelatinous mass. In addition, the editor's comment on pie melon was that it had no taste of itself, only being a carrier for the good things you added to it. Since pie melons are not common in my grocery, this recipe was not viable.
The vast majority of the recipes in Moore's Rural New Yorker are for baked goods. I chose Union Cake from the March 2, 1861 issue.
Several things intrigued me - first, the addition of a half cup of cornstarch and second, the lack of directions. This bare listing of ingredients with no instructions is very typical for recipes of this time period. There is an assumed body of common knowledge that you, the cook, are expected to know, and there is no sense wasting time or space writing those down.
THE RESEARCH
The Name and Type of Cake
First, the name. Union Cake does not seem to indicate a particular kind of cake, the way Silver Cake, Gold Cake, or Pound Cake do. There is another recipe for Union Cake in The Practical Cook Book by Mrs. Bliss (1850, Philadelphia)
While it sounds quite delicious, it bears no resemblance to the Union Cake I wanted to bake. In fact, this version sound more like a fruit cake.
Exactly what type of cake IS a cake that uses a substantial quantity of cornstarch? It's not anything with which we are familiar today. This type of cake seems to be part of a short-lived development of baking. The next appearance I could find of cornstarch in a cake is in The Genssee Farmer of Dec 1863 (also a New York agricultural magazine)
Here we have an even more unusual recipe - no flour at all - just cornstarch. (And by the way, gluten free).
A number of similar recipes follow across the years. Godey's Lady's Magazine offers a Cornstarch cake recipe in its February 1866 issue, as does Ballou's Monthly Magazine of Oct 1868. Godey's Lady's Book Receipts (1870), Buckeye Cookery (1877). and The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1918) all have recipes for Cornstarch Cake. Some of these include no flour whatsoever, making them gluten free. A couple add 2 Tablespoons of flour to the cornstarch. I have been able to find some modern recipes on the internet for Cornstarch Cake, but it seems to be a cake that died out of baking history.
For those who are interested in a gluten free Cornstarch Cake, here is a second recipe, this time from Ballou's Monthly Magazine (Oct 1868)
"Unless you are provided with proper and conveneint utensils and materials, the difficulty of preparing cakes will be great, and in most instances a failure; involving disappointment, waste of time, and useless expense." (p 334)
First we need to begin our cake-making at an early hour and we should be sure we have all the ingredients to hand (more on that later). Buy the best ingredients, as poor ingredients will lead to a poor cake and a waste of time and money.
Butter and sugar should be mixed together until quite light, the consistency of cream.
Dry ingredients should be sifted together.
Eggs should be thoroughly whisked until a stiff froth. (Mrs. Beeton's cookbook indicates separation of white and yolk). Miss Leslie gives instructions for whipping the entire egg and the white alone. Godey's Lady's Book Receipts tells us whites and yolks should always be separated and whisked well until stiff. A bit confusing in choice here.
We're all clear, right?
EGGS: Medium eggs are supposed to be closest in size to those of the period. I was amazed when I went grocery shopping to discover that very few stores now carry medium eggs. I had to go to 5 different stores before I could find any, and I paid more than I wanted to, simply because I was tired and my feet were sore. Next time I will start with my normal grocery store, which always carries medium-sized eggs.
MILK: The Robert E. Lee Family and Housekeeping Book also recommends half and half be used instead of whole milk in a period recipe, since cream skimming was not as efficient as it is today.
SUGAR: Powdered loaf sugar would not be modern powdered sugar, rather, it was sugar broken off a large sugar cone and then pounded and rolled until fine. By specifying "powdered," the recipe was asking for sugar that had been pounded in a mortar until it was superfine. I chose to put the sugar in my small food chopper and whir it until it resembled bar sugar - not as fine as powdered sugar, but much finer than regular sugar.
1 c. of butter, room temperature
2 c of white sugar that has been ground finely in a food blender
1 c of half and half
3 c of flour (King Arthur white wheat)
1/2 c cornstarch
4 medium sized eggs, room temperature
2 t lemon extract
1/2 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. (I chose this temperature because it is the standard cake temperature today. No temperatures are suggested in any of the recipes - not even the usual designations of "quick" or "slow.")
Beat the egg whites until stiff (I used a stand mixer)
In a different bowl, beat the egg yolks until lemony colored
Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and cream of tartar
In yet another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk.
Mix in the egg yolks. Fold in the egg whites
Turn into a buttered cake pan (I chose an angel food pan - no pan size is specified, but the cake pans illustrated in Miss Leslie's cookbook are all deep single pans. A bundt pan would work well, since it replicates the Turk's head pan). The batter is heavier than modern cake batter and will need to be spooned rather than poured.
Bake until done (a toothpick inserted should come out clean). I found this to be 60 minutes.
Turn onto a rack to cool.
Emily's request for a frosting came to my mind. so I quickly put together the frosting recipe from Emmeline F. Crawford of Clay, N.Y. (Moore's Rural New Yorker, April 27, 1861), which reads:
Exactly what type of cake IS a cake that uses a substantial quantity of cornstarch? It's not anything with which we are familiar today. This type of cake seems to be part of a short-lived development of baking. The next appearance I could find of cornstarch in a cake is in The Genssee Farmer of Dec 1863 (also a New York agricultural magazine)
Here we have an even more unusual recipe - no flour at all - just cornstarch. (And by the way, gluten free).
A number of similar recipes follow across the years. Godey's Lady's Magazine offers a Cornstarch cake recipe in its February 1866 issue, as does Ballou's Monthly Magazine of Oct 1868. Godey's Lady's Book Receipts (1870), Buckeye Cookery (1877). and The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1918) all have recipes for Cornstarch Cake. Some of these include no flour whatsoever, making them gluten free. A couple add 2 Tablespoons of flour to the cornstarch. I have been able to find some modern recipes on the internet for Cornstarch Cake, but it seems to be a cake that died out of baking history.
For those who are interested in a gluten free Cornstarch Cake, here is a second recipe, this time from Ballou's Monthly Magazine (Oct 1868)
Techniques
To learn how to make a cake, I turned to Miss Leslies' Complete Cookery of 1851 (Philadelphia). Her instructional chapter on cakes starts out on a discouraging note:"Unless you are provided with proper and conveneint utensils and materials, the difficulty of preparing cakes will be great, and in most instances a failure; involving disappointment, waste of time, and useless expense." (p 334)
First we need to begin our cake-making at an early hour and we should be sure we have all the ingredients to hand (more on that later). Buy the best ingredients, as poor ingredients will lead to a poor cake and a waste of time and money.
Butter and sugar should be mixed together until quite light, the consistency of cream.
Dry ingredients should be sifted together.
Eggs should be thoroughly whisked until a stiff froth. (Mrs. Beeton's cookbook indicates separation of white and yolk). Miss Leslie gives instructions for whipping the entire egg and the white alone. Godey's Lady's Book Receipts tells us whites and yolks should always be separated and whisked well until stiff. A bit confusing in choice here.
We're all clear, right?
Ingredients
FLOUR: For flour, I used King Arthur's white wheat flour. The Robert E. Lee Family and Housekeeping Book suggests that flour of this time was low gluten, with high gluten flour coming after the Civil War. The book suggests that cake flour is too tasteless to work well.
EGGS: Medium eggs are supposed to be closest in size to those of the period. I was amazed when I went grocery shopping to discover that very few stores now carry medium eggs. I had to go to 5 different stores before I could find any, and I paid more than I wanted to, simply because I was tired and my feet were sore. Next time I will start with my normal grocery store, which always carries medium-sized eggs.
MILK: The Robert E. Lee Family and Housekeeping Book also recommends half and half be used instead of whole milk in a period recipe, since cream skimming was not as efficient as it is today.
SUGAR: Powdered loaf sugar would not be modern powdered sugar, rather, it was sugar broken off a large sugar cone and then pounded and rolled until fine. By specifying "powdered," the recipe was asking for sugar that had been pounded in a mortar until it was superfine. I chose to put the sugar in my small food chopper and whir it until it resembled bar sugar - not as fine as powdered sugar, but much finer than regular sugar.
THE BAKING! FINALLY!
After all of that, do you remember the recipe?
What I Did:
1 c. of butter, room temperature2 c of white sugar that has been ground finely in a food blender
1 c of half and half
3 c of flour (King Arthur white wheat)
1/2 c cornstarch
4 medium sized eggs, room temperature
2 t lemon extract
1/2 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. (I chose this temperature because it is the standard cake temperature today. No temperatures are suggested in any of the recipes - not even the usual designations of "quick" or "slow.")
Beat the egg whites until stiff (I used a stand mixer)
In a different bowl, beat the egg yolks until lemony colored
Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and cream of tartar
In yet another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk.
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| Batter after adding egg yolks |
Mix in the egg yolks. Fold in the egg whites
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| Egg white folded in |
Turn into a buttered cake pan (I chose an angel food pan - no pan size is specified, but the cake pans illustrated in Miss Leslie's cookbook are all deep single pans. A bundt pan would work well, since it replicates the Turk's head pan). The batter is heavier than modern cake batter and will need to be spooned rather than poured.
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| Batter in angel food pan |
Bake until done (a toothpick inserted should come out clean). I found this to be 60 minutes.
Turn onto a rack to cool.
To Frost Or Not To Frost?
There the cake sat, looking lovely and golden. The entire process went well, the only real questions being the size of the pan (it was just right) and the time (I tested periodically after 40 min).
Emily's request for a frosting came to my mind. so I quickly put together the frosting recipe from Emmeline F. Crawford of Clay, N.Y. (Moore's Rural New Yorker, April 27, 1861), which reads:
"Allow for the white of an egg, nine heaping teaspoonsfuls of double refined sugar, and one of nice Poland starch. The sugar and the starch should be pounded and sifted through a very fine sieve. Beat the whites of eggs to a stiff froth, so that you can turn the plate upside down without their falling off, then stir in the sugar and starch gradually, - stir it ten or fifteen minutes without cessation, - then add a teaspoonful of lemon juice or a little extract, if you prefer. Lay the frosting on the cake with a knife soon after it is taken from the oven."
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| Frosting |
Here I admit I fudged. I did indeed use the raw egg white (only one) but somehow my memory remembered 9 tablespoons of sugar rather than teaspoons (I was racing to make this after the cake came out of the oven). As a separated the white, a bit of yolk got into it, so I knew I would never be able to achieve stiff peaks. I had sweated for those medium-sized eggs and I wasn't going to waste it. I turned the white into a small copper bowl and began beating by hand with a whisk, adding the sugar in increments. Of course it never peaked, but it did become very frothy and stiff-ish. I beat in some lemon extract and then spread the whole thing with a pastry brush over the still hot cake. As I made it, I realized I should have finely pulverized the sugar - but I didn't want to take the time, wanting to get it on the cake while it was still hot. The resulting frosting is a bit more grainy than I think it should be, but it's still delicious.
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| Frosting firming up on the cake |
The Challenge Details
Year and Region: 1861, Otisco, N. Y.
Time to Make:
3 hours to find and purchase the eggs. This still irritates me.
30 minutes or so to prepare and mix the cake
1 hour to bake
5 minutes to improvise a frosting that should have taken 20 minutes and been done while the cake
was baking.
Total Cost:
eggs: $3.00/dozen, I used 5 - so, $1.25
half and half left over from a different recipe. About $1.00
flour King Arthur white wheat flour ran $6.00/5 lb bag 3 c is roughly a pound, so
roughly $1.25
butter $2.69/lb, I used half a pound, so $1.35
cornstarch $1. 79 I have no idea how much the 1/2 c is of the total, so let's say $0.50
sugar from my pantry. I don't remember what I paid for the bag
lemon extract $1.99 Let's estimate I used around $0.40
baking soda and cream of tartar - staples in my pantry.
Not counting the cost of the sugar, we're at $5.75 for the cake.
How Successful Was It?
It's a delicious cake, not as sweet as a modern cake. The crumb is tender and light, but overall denser than a modern cake. The most interesting difference is the crust, which is crispy. I wonder if the crispness comes from the cornstarch, since the cake is definitely not over baked. We both enjoyed our pieces, and the lemon flavoring was not too much at all. I'd consider adding a bit more next time. I enjoyed the frosting as well.
How Accurate Is It?
The cake itself is as accurate as I can make it, except that I used modern kitchen tools (a mini food chopper rather than a motar and pestle and a stand mixer rather than hand or wooden spoon)
The frosting is definitely sweeter, since I accidentally added a lot more sugar. While I tried to atone by beating the egg white by hand, I never reached stiff peaks because of the speck of yolk.
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| HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. LINCOLN! |
The icing looks like a donut glaze! It makes it look quite good.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard of cornstarch cakes -- I'll have to try that at some point. Thanks for the research into it!
-- Tegan