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Sponge Cake

Cakes

Any light sweet cake made with flour and sugar etc. usually when given a sponge-like texture by the addition of egg. Before the invention of baking powder in the mid 19th Century the usual method of achieving lightness was by frothing egg-white. As with many everyday products, early receipts are rare. The term is not known before 1808, when it appears in Jane Austen's letters.


Original Receipt from 'Modern Domesic Cookery' by Elizabeth Hammond (Hammond 1819)

Spunge cake.
Weigh fifteen eggs, put their weight in very fine sugar, and that of nine in flour, beat the yolks with the flour, and the whites alone to a very stiff froth; then by degrees mix the whites and the flour with the other ingredients, and beat them forty minutes. Bake in a quick oven about one hour and ten minutes.




Original Receipt from 'Pot-luck; or, The British home cookery book' by May Byron (Byron 1914)

866. SPONGE CAKE (Surrey)

Three eggs, their weight in castor sugar, the weight of two eggs in flour, three drops essence of lemon. Beat the eggs and sugar together, till light (quite twenty minutes' good beating), stir in the flour, but do not beat it, add the flavouring, put into a greased and sugared tin, and bake at once in a moderate oven, about thirty minutes.

867. CHEAP SPONGE CAKE (Surrey)

Three eggs, three cupfuls of flour, two cupfuls of sugar, half-cupful of milk, one teaspoonful of cream of tartar, half teaspoonful of soda, lemon. Bake quick. (Breakfast-cups are apparently intended. Ed.)

868. RICH SPONGE CAKE (Hampshire)

Break twelve large eggs into a deep basin, beat for ten minutes, sift in by degrees one pound of castor sugar; when this has been beaten all together twenty minutes, sift half a pound of pastry flour and half a pound of self-raising flour, previously well mixed together and warmed. Continue to beat, till the time in aU is half an hour. Put into tins well buttered and sugared, and bake for one hour.



For a wide variety of traditional sponge cakes, see Vine's Shop Goods, 1907

and...

Cakes
Albert Cakes
Bridgwater Carnival Pudding
Brighton Gingerbread
Buckingham Cakes
Carrot Cake
Cheese and Apple Cake
Cherry and Almond Cake
Chocolate and Orange Cake
Cockle Cakes
Courting Cake (1)
Cup Cakes
Diet Bread Cake
Dorset Apple Cake
Dover Cakes
Duchess Cakes
Elderflower Cake
Exeter Pudding
Fairy Cakes
Ginger Cake
Granny Cake
Grasmere Cake
Hampshire Roll
Harrogate Sponge
Hazelnut Shortcake
Kensington Cakes
Ladyfingers, or, Boudoir Biscuits
Lakeland Lemon Cake
Lambing Cake
Leamingtons
Lemon Cake
Lemon Drizzle Cake
Lemon or Orange Pudding
Lime Syrup Cake
Lord Mayor's Trifle
Madeira Cake
Malvern Cakes
Marble Cake or Marble Teabread
Marmalade
Miller's Marmalade Pudding
Northamptonshire Seed Cake
Orange Cake
Paradise Loaf
Picnic Cake
Plum and Apple Dumpling
Rhubarb Sponge Cake
Ripon Plum Cake
Shoeburyness Pudding
Shropshire Apple Cake
Somerset Apple Cake
Sponge Cake
Swiss Roll
Tapioca Pudding
Tavistock Cakes
Tipsy Cake Pudding
Tipsy Squire
Tipsy Trifle
Tottenham Cake
Tunis Cake
Upside Down Cake
Victoria Sandwich Sponge Cake
Wassail Custard
White Cake
Wimbledon Cake






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