Yellow Cake – Part 3: An old recipe

For the third experiment with yellow cake, I selected a recipe from an old cookbook. The recipe came from the only cookbook I remember my mother having: The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery – An Encyclopedic Handbook for the Homemaker covering Foods and Beverages -their Purchase, Preparation and Service.

The copy of the Wise Encyclopedia I have was published in 1949, just in time for the post-war boom. Apparantly, the book was reissued in the 1970’s and copies of that book are available from used book stores. This book played a key part of my education. The house I grew up in had few books. I was the first avid reader in the family and once I learned to read, the Wise Encyclopedia was often the only reading material I had available. So I read it cover to cover. Young as I was, very little was retained but some of the procedures come back to me when they are needed. I never realized I knew how to dress a chicken until one was dropped in front of me and the pages of Wise surfaced from deep within my memory. But I digress. Back to the cake.

First I cooked a box cake; easy but disappointing in a few ways. Then I cooked the same style cake from a modern cookbook; very easy and quite good. The modern book told me just how much of each ingredient to use, how long to mix on slow and how long to mix on high. It suggested a cake pan size, an oven temperature in degrees and exactly how long to bake the cake.

Obviously, things were different in 1949. Either, cookbook writers could rely on readers to have good cook-sense; to know things later generations of cooks forgot, or the fine art of recipe writing had not been perfected. The Wise book told me how much of each ingredient to measure, but that was about it. Instead of “beat for 30 seconds on low, add the liquid and beat on a high setting for 3 minutes” it simply said “cream and add the sugar, add the remainder of the ingredients; beat until smooth.” It did not suggest a pan size but did say to “bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes.” The recipe assumed I would know enough to grease the cake pan. In short, it took a little more thought and a few decisions on my part.

Did the lack of explicit instructions make the process more difficult? Not really. In fact, the cake was in the pan faster than the modern recipe. Looking back, I should have used a smaller pan and mixed the cake without the mixer, but all was good in the end anyway. This cake took only 5 minutes more than the box-cake. The batter was, by far, the best tasting of the three. It took discipline to put it into the cake pan and cook it. I could have eaten most of it like soup. In a 350 degree oven, which I decided was moderate, it cooked up in 30 minutes. Since it was done when I tested it, I assume I could have set the oven a bit lower. The cake came out closer to sponge cake than the other two, but lovely and aromatic. I whipped up a chocolate, butter frosting and had a piece.

I was surprised that this third cake tasted so much better than the cake made from the modern cookbook. The ingredients were not that much different. The older recipe brought them together in a different order and I assume that caused the difference in taste and texture.

It was good to revisit the old, familiar book and I am pleased, for no good reason, that the cake baked from it was better than the others. The experiment was enjoyable and the conclusion expected. If you are going to bother to bake a cake, bake it from scratch. The improvement is well worth the 7 or 5 minutes you save with the cake mix.

copyright 2005 Chromia Poetics