ISSUE 68, CAKE, Part 2: 1 2 3 4 Cake
1 2 3 4 Cake
In the United States the use of easy and memorable names that instruct cooks on proportions of ingredients were a hallmark of the women’s cooking schools that emerged in several big cities of the eastern United States in the decades before the Civil War. Mrs. Goodfellow’s Cooking School in Philadelphia was the earliest, and model for these institutions where women might learn cooking, baking, and pastry work under the tuition of a . Eliza Leslie, the famous cook book author of the antebellum period, trained at Mrs. Goodfellow’s and in her earliest book, 75 recipes for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeat, one can see the tendency to “bake by numbers” in the tendency to have the measures be the same (in pound cake), or simplified into two measures, as in a lb. and ½ lb. of ingredients, in Apees. Such simplification made recipes easier to memorize.
The classic formula for 1 2 3 4 cake is simple. This Dec. 17, 1859 recipe from the Philadelphia Herald and Visitor captures the formula in its starkest simplicity:
There are no spices, no liquid other than that supplied by the eggs, no baking powder or soda, and no instructions on how long to bake the mixture. The ingredients and the proportions produce a batter that could be used for cookies or cakes. There were forms of the butter cake from the early 19th century that pointed to this recipe, with the 1 cup butter, two cups sugar, and three cups flour. But most of these had substantially more eggs—up to 24 in 1840’s The Cook’s Own Book.
Almost invariably the 1 2 3 4 cake’s plainness invited a cook to adorn the flavor with ginger, clove, or nutmeg, or perhaps glaze the top with honey, jam, or a fruit syrup. James Beard favored citrus glaze. That is his version of the cake that appears in the illustration above.