Today we’re going to be making a wonderful traditional pound cake.
This recipe comes from Amelia Simons’ 1796 cookbook, “American Cookery”.
It’s a simple recipe that I think you’re going to find a little surprising.
Thank you for joining us today on 18th Century Cooking.
The term Pound Cake today generally refers to a cake that’s baked in a round form pan,
like a bunt pan and they’re generally much more dense than, say, a typical cake.
In the 18th century, however, the term pound cake really comes from the amount of ingredients
that are in this recipe, so generally a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour,
and a pound of eggs and in Amelia Simons’ recipe, that’s exactly what we’ve got.
Amelia also suggests a couple of other things.
A jill of rose water and spices to taste.
So Amelia Simons’ recipe is too simple.
It’s only got just a few lines, really, to put together this seemingly complex cake.
I mean, we might be tempted to just throw the ingredients together, mix them up and
toss it in the oven, but if you study other 18th century cake recipes from maybe a slightly
earlier time period and books that have a little more information, we find out that
we can’t do that with this recipe.
We actually have to use these other techniques from other cookbooks to make this properly.
We need to start with creaming our butter with our sugar.
Now this butter has been softened but not melted.
Now in the 18th century they would have mixed this by squeezing it together with their hands.
You can speed this process up by using a modern mixer on high for about 5 minutes.
When it comes to spices, Amelia gives us basically no suggestions.
She leaves this completely up to the cook.
Now many recipes in the 18th century would use something like caraway seeds.
That’s very popular for something like this, but today we’re going to be using some nutmeg
and a little bit of cinnamon, both also very popular 18th century spices for this kind of a cake.
Now that this is light and fluffy, we can add in our spices.
I’ve got about a half a nutmeg here that’s grated up and maybe a teaspoon or a little
bit less of nice ground cinnamon and if you’re going to be trying the rose water, now would
be the time to add that in and then we’re going to mix this up for another minute or two.
So let’s talk a little bit first about rose water, and rose water is used in this or she
mentions rose water in this recipe.
Rose water was very popular in the 17th century, early 18th century in cooking and we kind
of think of it as a spice but really it’s more of an aromatic, a perfume that we use in these recipes.
Another aromatic that’s very popular is the orange blossom water and you can find
either one of these still available either online or in Mediterranean markets.
By the end of the 18th century, by the end of the 1700’s, these things were really
falling out of favor in English cooking.
We tried this recipe out a number of times with the rose water and we tried this on different
people and some people really thought the flavor was intriguing and others disliked
it because it reminded them of the flavor of soap.
If you’re looking for that kind of traditional taste, I suggest you go ahead and try to find
some rose water or orange flower blossom water to experiment in this.
If you can’t find those, it’s okay to leave them out.
Most modern cakes today use a chemical leavening to make them light and fluffy.
Either baking soda or baking powder.
In the 17th and 18th century, cakes most often used either a yeast leavener or an egg leavening.
In other videos, we pointed out that Amelia Simmons uses a very crude version of a chemical
leavening in some of her recipes.
In other recipes, she uses yeast as a leavener.
In this recipe, she doesn’t mention any leavening at all, but we have lots of eggs,
so what we need to do here is beat a lot of air into these eggs.
As it cooks, these air bubbles will expand.
That’s going to give us our leavening.
If you wish to make this recipe as they did in the 1700’s, you’ll need to whisk this
for about an hour, hand held, with a whisk.
If you’re going to be using a modern appliance, you’re going to need to whisk this on high
for not more than 15 minutes.
If you’re using medium eggs, you’ll need 10 eggs.
If you’re using large eggs, just 9 will do.
Before you start to whisk these eggs, make sure your whisk is butter free or the eggs
will not whip up properly.
Carefully fold the eggs into your butter mixture and then sift in the flour little by little.
Try not to over work this.
We’re trying to keep as much of the air in the eggs as possible.
Now, you can bake this in a bunt pan if you would like.
You’ll need to butter it very well and you’ll bake it at about 325 degrees for say an hour
and a half to two hours.
Other recipes we’ve found used a cake ring.
Either a tin cake ring or a wood cake ring that was lined outside with paper and the
inside buttered, but Amelia Simons’ recipe suggests baking this for just 15 minutes.
Now this gives us another clue into how this version was made.
The word cake in the 1700’s could apply to a great cake and we covered something like
the great cake when we did our 12th night cake recipe.
Now these cakes were huge, sometimes they were 20-30-40 pounds or more, but the word
cake can also refer to something much smaller.
Something that we, today would call a cookie, and in fact, the first kind of reference,
at least in American cookery and English cookery, is Amelia Simons’ reference to the word
cookie here that she borrows from the Dutch, so if we take into account this 15-minute
cooking time, there is no way that this could be baked as a big cake in a bunt pan or in
one of these wooden forms.
This most likely was baked as a cookie on a baking sheet, probably on paper.
They might have baked them in small little tart tins that were buttered or even in a
little paper tray or cup that we’ve seen some references to in 18th century cookery.
We won’t need to butter the paper or treat it in any way.
Once these cookies cool all the way off, we’ll be able to just peel the paper away.
If you’re baking these at home, they’ll bake for 15-20 minutes at a temperature of
about 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Make sure to preheat your oven.
You’ll need to watch these closely so they don’t burn.
Let them cool completely before you try to remove them from the paper.
Let’s give these a try.
They look wonderful.
It’s actually got a really nice soft texture to it.
They have a wonderful, simple yet complex flavor to them.
Nice and sweet, again really, really good texture.
Nice and soft.
You can definitely taste the nutmeg and the cinnamon in there.
It would be really interesting to have these with a little bit of that rose water.
These are wonderful and really simple and can you imagine if you baked 4 pounds of these guys?
It’s likely that you either had a really big crowd to feed or you would double bake
these to dry them up so that they would last for quite a while, and let’s look at one
of these little bigger ones, this cupcake version here, and I can break this open here
and you can see the texture.
It’s got a really nice cakey texture to it.
This is not dense at all.
Really, all that air whipped in there did a tremendous job of leavening this.
It’s really good.
Mmm
Well, this one turned out great!
I love these.
In fact, I could eat them all day.
I’m not going to.
You should definitely try this one out.
They are excellent!
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This is really good.
I want to thank you for coming along as we try these things out, as we savor the flavors
and the aromas of the 18th century.
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