It is that time of the
year again - the time of year when I vicariously enjoy Thanksgiving with my
American friends, my contribution to the day being some recipes and menus from
past times.
When I look back at my
Thanksgiving week posts from previous years, I have covered many variations on
the themes and recipes of the day. Many, if not most of them are listed and
linked below this story, in case you want to look back. It might be thought –
indeed, I thought it momentarily myself when I looked at the list – that there
is nothing else to cover on the topic. The theme, however, is inexhaustible, as
I hope to demonstrate for many more years yet.
We have certainly never
covered the Thanksgiving Loaf in past years. Today, courtesy of the New York Times of November 25, 1894, I
give you, inclusive of all of its enthusiasm, fine advice, recipes, and disparaging
comments on domestic cooks:-
A SHORT ESSAY ON CAKE
With some Specially-Culled Receipts for the Thanksgiving
Loaf.
The
little fancy cakes and other confections of the caterers, together with the
tendency nowadays, at least among city housekeepers, to oversee, not
participate, in the family cooking, has almost made the art of cake-making a
lost one. Yet it is a real accomplishment to make light, delicate cake, and one
which the faddish hostess, seeking for a novelty, will find more striking than
a new pâté or a fresh salad dressing.
Like
trimming a kerosene lamp, to make a good cake requires judgement, and a degree
of intelligence that is not, as a rule, a part of the natural endowments of the
kitchen queen. Many a cook will tell you she can make a cake as light as a
feather, and so, perhaps, she can, the feathery element being imparted by free
use of baking powder. Such cake is as different from the real, old-fashioned,
fine-grained, rich flavored cake as is the turned and glued furniture from
hand-made cabinet work. Both are called by the same specific name, and both do
a similar duty, but only one is really furniture so only one is really cake.
Cake
is such a luxury always, and should be regarded as such. The best of materials
are the sine qua non of all wholesome cake. If cake can be afforded at all,
then sweet butter, fresh eggs, good flour, and sugar can go into it. Don’t try
to use inferior articles, and trust to generous flavouring to condone the
offense. The result must inevitably be disaster. Marion Harland, on one of her
cook books, happily quotes an epicure: “Cooking butter is a good thing, an
admirable thing – in its place, which is in the soap fat kettle or upon wagon
wheels.” It is certainly out of place in cake, as are limed eggs, skimmed milk,
poor flavoring extracts, or any similar subterfuges of the false economist. It is
perfectly easy to go without cake; it is impossible to make good cake without
the best of materials.
The knack
of making cake is not acquired without practice. You may study an authority on
whist for years, you will never become an accomplished player except through long
practice. So the good cakemaker reaches that height, often after many failures;
she learns, finally, however, that eggs vary in size and weight, and other
ingredients must be proportioned accordingly; that holes and lumps in the loaf
show poor mixing as clearly as if it were written down, and that a cake touch,
a certain light quick movement, in putting the materials together, is as
valuable in its way as a good touch on the piano.
When
the cake impulse comes, look first of all to the oven. An even, strong, heat is
needed for most cake; open the oven door as little as possible; every cakemaker
sighs for the speedy coming of the announced day of glass oven doors. To look
at her cake without danger of the disturbing chill of the outer air reaching
the oven will be a boon indeed.
After
testing the oven, see that all the materials are together and ready. Have the
eggs broken, the yolks in one bowl, the whites in another, both in the ice
chest; the flour sifted first, then duly measured, and on a deep pie plate; the
cup or half cup of milk ready; the lemon and grater at hand, or the vanilla or
rosewater bottle out; the baking powder measured and sifted into the flour; the
butter measured and in its cup; and the sugar also measured, and in another
deep pie plate like that which holds the flour; if fruit is to be used, have
raisins stoned, currants washed and floured, citron cut, almonds blanched and
chopped or shaved, figs or citron cut up, and pans and greased paper at hand.
Cream
the butter with a wooden spoon in the large cake bowl, add the sugar by
degrees, and beat the mixture to a frothy lightness; if someone is helping you,
she may beat the yolks to have them ready when the butter and sugar are
creamed, but, if doing the work alone, the cold yolks will beat in one minute,
and the cake foundation suffer no harm from the wait; stir part of the yolks in,
part of the milk, and part of the flour; repeat the round till materials are
used, adding the flavoring, and giving the mixture fifty seconds hard whisking
a the end of the process; the whites must be frothed to the standing-alone
point, and quickly stirred in, the fruit, if any, being added at the same time;
then the mixture is ready for the oven. In many kitchens the tradition survives
that cake should be stirred only one way; the writer is willing to admit that
is does in hers. Two cake receptacles are necessary. A tin box keeps crisp and
dry such cakes as should be so kept, as ginger snaps, jumbles, and the like,
while a stone crock, wide and deep, to hold loaves unbroken, and with a close
cover, keeps fresh and moist sponge, loaf, and layer cake. Fruit cake made to
last months should be folded in dampened cloths and put in a separate stone
jar. It should be iced only as needed. A great improvement is to pour sherry
wine over the loaf when it is about a month old, or as it is need to use. Ice
afterward.
It is
an excellent plan that the daughter of the household should be the cakemaker.
Let her serve her novitiate as assistant to her mother, and soon the mantle of
this accomplishment may fall wholly upon her.
A
delicious loaf to grace the Thanksgiving table is taken from a private receipt
book:
Delicate
and Fruit Cake:- The whites of five eggs, two cups of sugar, three-quarters of
a cup of butter, two and a half cups of flour, one cup of sweet milk, three
teaspoonfuls of baking powder; flavor with lemon or vanilla. For the fruit cake:
To two large wooden tablespoonfuls of the cake dough left after putting two
layer tinfuls in the oven, add half a cup of raisings, one-half cup of flour,
one-half cup of molasses, a few currants, and little chopped citron. Bake this
in a third layer, putting it between the other two, with jelly. Ice the top.
A
very good chocolate cake, which cuts up prettily in a basket with pieces of the
above delicate cake, baked plain, is made as follows:
Chocolate
Cake.- Mix one-half cake of unsweetened chocolate* with one-half cup of milk;
add yolk of one egg, and sweeten to taste; flavor with one teaspoonful of
vanilla; leave mixture on back of stove till soft, then stir into cake.
The
cake is made from one cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, one-half cup of
milk, two eggs, one teaspoonful of soda, and two cups of flour; stir in the chocolate
and bake in a slow oven about three-quarters of an hour.
[*this
refers to a ‘cake’ of compressed, ground cacao beans – the earlier form of
cocoa; it does not refer to a block of eating chocolate.]
Previous Thanksgiving
stories:
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