History of Cake
from http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcakes.html
Also see History of Frosting
Earliest Cakes
The earliest known example of something akin to a cake dates back to the Neolithic era. These primitive peoples began making cakes shortly after they discovered flour. The earliest examples were found among the remains of Neolithic villages where archaeologists discovered simple cakes made from crushed grains, moistened, compacted and probably cooked on a hot stone. Today's version of this early cake would be oatcakes, though now we think of them more as a biscuit or cookie. As time passed the variety of goods that could be made this way grew, some were leavened while some remained more simple. These remained the norm until the appearance of ancient Egyptians.
According to the food historians, the ancient Egyptians were the first culture to show evidence of advanced baking skills. Baking was always a haphazard affair, however. The elements required had to be carefully gauged, and in ancient times it was difficult to control such items as heat and moisture. The ancient Egyptians, as with so many other things, were the first to regard baking as an art. They developed reliable cooking methods and early ovens in which they prepared a great variety of breads that served all kinds of functions within the meal. Many were sweetened with honey and eaten as desserts, but although we have plenty of evidence of the baking process from tomb paintings and we know the ingredients from those found in tomb offerings, it is difficult to know exactly what their breads tasted like.
Blaanda Bread
This bread is still made in the Shetland Islands, located at Scotland’s and the United Kingdom’s northernmost point in the North Atlantic Ocean, but is similar to that made in prehistoric societies, such as Skara Brae (Neolithic settlement in the Orney Islands around 5000 years ago).
10 tbl. barley meal
10 tbl. oatmeal
2 oz. butter
A pinch of salt
Milk to mixMix the barley meal, oatmeal and salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter and then gradually add enough milk to make a firm dough. It shouldn't be sticky. Shape it into a round flat cake and bake slowly on a griddle.
In 2600 B.C. Egyptians discovered yeast and began incorporating it into their breadmaking, revolutionizing how humans baked. These yeast-leavened breads were produced with barley and emmer wheat. The type of yeast used was often a by-product of beer fermentation, which likely conferred a distinct flavor to these breads. A variation of sweetbreads was also made. These were sweetened with honey and supplemented with ingredients like fruit, nuts, seeds, spices, and wine for flavor. These cake-like breads were shaped into spheres, decorated, and then baked, yielding a heavy confection that bears little resemblance to modern-day cakes.
Archaeological evidence from the tomb of Ramses III indicates thousands of different types of bread and cakes were made during this time and frequently left as offerings to the gods. Artistic representations of baking on tomb reliefs, paintings, and models, depict elaborately decorated cake-like bread with designs like date palm leaves and animals. All of these reinforce the importance of baking to Egyptian life, commerce, and ritual, which explains the great strides made in bread and cake baking during this period.
Classical Era - Ancient Greek & Roman
By the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, baking with yeast had become commonplace. The Greeks and Romans also began incorporating ingredients like eggs, milk, cheese, and olive oil.
Cakes were called "plakous" by the Greeks, from the word for "flat." These cakes were usually combinations of nuts, dried fruits and honey. Chrysippus of Tyana gives the recipe for a honey nut cake that he tasted in Crete. To us, it still has more in common with oatcakes, but is very good. Chrysippus' cakes are unusual, in that he gives us a fairly thorough recipe. In most cases it's much more difficult to determine what the dishes actually tasted like, as the accounts are vague and refer to only one or two key ingredients.
Once we enter the Roman period things become a little easier. The Roman Empire took things to an even more elevated level, creating a Baker's Guild known as the Pistorium in 168 B.C. Bakers were considered revered artisans, with an annual baking festival celebrated in honor of the goddess of the oven, Fornax.
The Latin for cake was derived from the Greek and became "placenta," but there were other words for cake too, such as "libum." Cato gives a recipe for Libum in On Agriculture (75 AD), and it seems to be a small cheesecake sweetened with honey. Libum was primarily used as an offering to the gods, though there are examples of larger versions being made for general consumption.
One of the most popular cakes in the Roman Empire was the Placenta. Reminiscent of the Greek plakous, this flat confection made of flour, honey, and cheese featured heavily at birthday parties and was a frequent sacrificial offering during religious rituals. Placenta was more a complex cheesecake, baked on a pastry base, or sometimes inside a pastry case. It too was sweetened with clear honey and was often presented as an offering at temples. This may have been a precursor to today’s baklava.
On a more basic level was the "satura," a flat heavy cake that hearkened back to the earlier Greek recipes, featuring barley with raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and sweet wine.
The Romans weren't limited to such simple fare, however, and in the later Empire they became skilled with yeast. The northern and western barbarians also leavened their bread, though in their case they used barm, which is a foaming yeast drawn from the top of beer.
Cato's Cheesecake: Libum
Placenta (a Roman Cake from Cato; layered cheese, honey, & pastry)
Chrysippus of Tyana on Cheesecakes
Ancient Roman Desserts – Pastries, Cakes and Biscuits
The original dividing line between cake and bread was fairly thin: in Roman times eggs and butter were often added to basic bread dough to give a consistency we would recognize as cakelike, and this was frequently sweetened with honey.
Medieval Period
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the English word cake back to the 13th century. It is a derivation of 'kaka', an Old Norse word.
At the beginning of the Medieval era, everyday cakes still resembled those manufactured by the Greeks and Romans. It was not until the Crusades in the 11th century that sugar became available in Europe, and, in the beginning, it was considered a luxury item that could only be afforded by the elite wealthy classes. Brightly colored sweet cakes with many elaborately decorated layers became a status symbol, further dividing the haves and have-nots.
As time went on the terms "bread" and "cake" became interchangeable. The words themselves are of Anglo Saxon origin, and it's probable that initially the term "cake" was used for the smaller breads. They didn't stay small for long, however, and soon came to resemble what we know call fruit breads; raised with yeast and including raisins, butter, cream, eggs, spices and honey or sugar. There are still plenty of examples of this kind of cake around, including such British staples as tea cakes, which are actually lightly sweetened fruit buns.
Medieval European bakers often made fruitcakes and gingerbread. These foods could last for many months. Cakes were usually baked for special occasions because they were made with the finest and most expensive ingredients available to the cook. The wealthier you were, the more likely you might consume cake on a more frequent basis.
Renaissance (15th & 16th centuries)
By the Renaissance, sugar was no longer considered a rare commodity, making it more accessible and cost-effective for the average European to incorporate into their daily meals. This resulted in an explosion of sweet treats and a rebirth of cakes into something more sophisticated and recognizable by the cake standards of today.
Italian cooks became famous during the Renaissance for their baking skills and were hired by households in both England and France. This era also ushered in newer baking techniques, including unique leavening processes. Yeast often produced dense baked goods, which wasn't as desirable for cake making. Italian chefs began experimenting with beating egg whites into a meringue to incorporate into cakes rendering them less heavy. While this was a laborious and precious process, it yielded fluffier and more delicate cakes.
The new items that they introduced were called "biscuits," though they were the precursors to what we now consider to be sponge cake. The earliest sponge cake recipe in English was recorded by Gervase Markham in 1615. These sponge cakes weren't exactly your Betty Crocker behemoths, though - they were most likely thin, crisp cakes, more like modern cookies. Macaroons were developed during this period, as were spiced buns such as the Easter staple, Hot Cross Buns.
Although from the 17th century, these recipes for cake represent what we find in 16th century cooking. Excellent Small Cakes is for a type of cookie with an icing, and the To Make an Excellent Cake is for a raised bread made with barm, a yeast used at that time, and iced with a mixture of egg whites, sugar and rosewater.
In England the shape and contents of cakes were gradually converging toward our present understanding of the term. In medieval and Elizabethan times most "cakes" were usually quite small, more like cookies than cake. For instance, Excellent Small Cakes from The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight by Sir Kenelm Digby, 1669 were iced currant cookies.
Powdered sugar: From the 16th century to the 18th century, consumers got their sugar in varying degrees refinement. As a result, recipes from this period often included directions for clarifying and sifting sugar. Sugar was sold in the form of loaves or cones and pieces were cut from them with the use of a tool called a sugar cutter. The earliest form of powdered sugar was sugar that had been grated from the loaves or cones. The grated sugar could then be sifted. This sifted sugar was the first form of powdered sugar. With sifting, the finer sugar granules would be separated from the larger ones.
Excellent Small Cakes
Digby p. 221/175Take three pound of very fine flower well dried by the fire, and put to it a pound and a half of loaf sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dried; 3 pounds of currants well washed, and dried in a cloth and set by the fire; when your flour is well mixed with the sugar and currants, you must put in it a pound and a half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of cream, with the yolks of three newlaid eggs beat with it, one nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through warm. Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards ice them over with sugar. The cakes should be about the bigness of a hand breadth and thin; of the size of the sugar cakes sold at Barnet.
- The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Kenelm Digby, 1669Note: ‘Sack’ was a popular Spanish wine in this period, they replaced the French Bordeaux wines when they were no longer available to Britain because of the conflicts with the French. Red and White, these are the wines of the Andalucia region.
To Make an Excellent Cake (GOOD)
Digby p. 219/175To a peck of fine flour take six pounds of fresh butter, which must be tenderly melted, ten pounds of currants, of cloves and mace, 1/2 an ounce of each, an ounce of cinnamon, 1/2 an ounce of nutmegs, four ounces of sugar, one pint of sack mixed with a quart at least of thick barm of ale (as soon as it is settled to have the thick fall to the bottom, which will be when it is about two days old), half a pint of rosewater; 1/2 a quarter of an ounce of saffron. Then make your paste, strewing the spices, finely beaten, upon the flour: then put the melted butter (but even just melted) to it; then the barm, and other liquours: and put it into the oven well heated presently. For the better baking of it, put it in a hoop, and let it stand in the oven one hour and a half. You ice the cake with the whites of two eggs, a small quantity of rosewater, and some sugar.
- The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Kenelm Digby, 1669
17th Century
According to the food historians, the precursors of modern cakes (round ones with icing) were first baked in Europe sometime in the mid-17th century. This is due to primarily to advances in technology (more reliable ovens, manufacture/availability of food molds) and ingredient availability (refined sugar).
At that time cake hoops--round molds for shaping cakes that were placed on flat baking trays--were popular. They could be made of metal, wood or paper. The molds were balanced atop a baking sheet and then filled with the cake batter. The whole apparatus would then get placed into the oven to bake. Some were adjustable. Cake pans were sometimes used.
A second important invention of this era was that of icing, which at first was a boiled concoction made from egg whites, sugar, and flavorings, like rosewater. Once this mixture came together, it would get drizzled atop a baked cake. The glazed cake would then be returned to the oven, where this icing would begin to set atop the dessert. When the cake was finished, it would be allowed to cool completely, during which this icing would firm up, encasing the cake like a crispy shell. These iced masterpieces would then get garnished with nuts, fruits, seeds, or other intricate decorations. When served at special events, they were often accompanied by sugary beverages, like tea or sweet wine.
Many cakes made at this time still contained dried fruits (raisins, currants, citrons).
"For the cakes of the seventeenth century onwards tin or iron hoops were increasingly used and are mentioned with great frequency in the cookery books. These hoops were similar to our modern flan rings but much deeper...The hoop was placed on an iron or tin sheet, and a layer or two of paper, floured, was put at the bottom. The sides of the hoop were buttered,
These or similar directions offer over and over again in E. Smith's The Compleat Housewife, first published in 1727, which gives recipes for forty cakes, the large ones nearly all being yeast-leavened. In her preface this author says that her book was the fruit of upwards of thirty years' experience, so her recipes and methods must often date well back into the previous century, for quite often the reader is directed to bake the cake in a 'paper hoop'--and paper was a feature of the kitchens of those days.
Wooden hoops were also fairly common. Some cooks, the seventeenth-century Sir Kenelm Digby among others, evidently preferred them to tin, perhaps because they didn't rust, and so were easier to store. Probably they would have been rather like the frames of our present-day drum sieves. Writing a century after Digby, Elizabeth Raffald calls them 'garths' and advises her readers that for large cakes they are better than 'pot or tin', in which the cakes, so Mrs. Raffald found, were liable to burn more easily. Alternatively, spice cakes were baked like bread, without moulds."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, American edition with notes from Karen Hess [Penguin:Middlesex] 1979 (p. 212)
18th Century and Later
It took until the 18th century, to discover the technique of whipping eggs to make cakes rise. By the middle of the 18th century, yeast had fallen into disuse as a raising agent for cakes in favor of beaten eggs heralding the dawn of modern cake baking. Once as much air as possible had been beaten in, the mixture would be poured into molds, often very elaborate creations, but sometimes as simple as two tin hoops, set on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. It is from these cake hoops that our modern cake pans developed.
Food historians generally agree that pound cake is a Northern European recipe named for the equal weight of its ingredients. Historic evidence confirms recipes for pound cake first surface in 18th century English and American cookbooks. Then, as now, there were variations on the recipe. Early recipes sometimes included alcohol and currants. Many are flavored with a hint of lemon. Given the number of cookbooks from this time period include at least one recipe for pound cake, it is clear that pound cake was very popular.
POUND CAKE
One pound sugar, one pound butter, one pound flour, one pound or ten eggs, rose water one gill, spices to your taste; watch it well, it will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.
- from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons (1796)
Cakes were considered a symbol of well being by early American cooks on the east coast, with each region of the country having their own favorites.
Recipe from French cook François Menon’s book “The professed cook; or the modern art of cookery, …. ”
- from the 1769 English translation of the book
Gateaux d’Amandes. Almond Cake.
Take half a Pound of Flour, half a Pound of pounded sweet Almonds, and five or six bitter with it, half a Pound of Sugar, six Eggs, and work it well all together; form it into a Cake; bake it on a sheet of Paper, well buttered; when cold, glaze it with a white Sugar-glaze: another Method for the same Sorts of Cakes; bake it in a Mould, or Baking-hoop; pound a Pound of sweet Almonds very fine, and one Dozen of bitter ditto, putting Whites of Eggs, to hinder them from turning to Oil; then put to it half a Pound of fine Sugar-powder by Degrees, two whole Eggs, Lemon-peel, finely chopped or rasped; when this is properly mixed, add eight Eggs, the Yolks and Whites first beat up separately; stir it, and mix it all properly; and pour it in the Mould, to bake about an Hour: serve in its natural Colour.
One of the earliest cakes to use an American ingredient was the Indian Pound Cake, which used corn meal, known then as "Indian meal." Other inventions – the hickory nut cake and black walnut cake – used nuts indigenous to the New World. "Which is why a grandmother's cake recipe will usually have walnuts in it," says Byrn.
19th Century
Amazingly, it seems that the idea of cake as a dessert was particularly late in coming. Initially, they were served as a snack with sweet wine, much as madeira cake still is. Large, elaborate cakes would often be made as part of the display for banquets, but these were rarely eaten. The style of eating since the Middle Ages had required a selection of dishes to be on the table all at the same time. These would be removed and replaced with another vast array, but in the mid-nineteenth century the fashion changed and Service à la Russe became all the rage. Now the meal was served by servants, bringing diners individual dishes (similar to modern restaurant service), and while such a performance wasn't within the reach of most people, it did result in a feature that everyone could enjoy - the dessert course. Now the decorated cake that we all know and love finally put in its appearance.
There was only one thing to be dealt with - all that pesky whisking. By the early 19th century, due to the Industrial Revolution, baking ingredients, such as flour and sugar, became more affordable and readily available because of mass production and the railroads. We'd have to wait quite a while for electric beaters, but modern leavening agents, such as baking soda and baking powder were invented. By the 1840s, baking soda had been invented, followed by baking powder in the 1860s.
As ovens with regulated temperatures became available, and sugar became affordable to everyone, more people were able to bake, resulting in more creativity in recipe development; the modern cake as we know it began to take shape in the mid-19th century. It was then that cake as we know it today (made with extra refined white flour and baking powder instead of yeast) arrived on the scene. The Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book [London, 1894] contains a recipe for layer cake, American. Butter-cream frostings (using butter, cream, confectioners sugar and flavorings) began replacing traditional boiled icings in first few decades 20th century. In France, Antonin Careme [1784-1833] is considered THE premier historic chef of the modern pastry/cake world.
"The cookbook evidence suggests that Victorian American women served cake in the same basic ways that their mothers and grandmothers had. For desserts, women generally baked cake in square pans or "in sheets" and served it in cut squares on cake plates or in pierced-silver cake baskets...
Much grander party cakes were required for this new age, and they promptly materialized. First was the marble cake (light and dark cakes mixed to effect the marble pattern) appeared during the last quarter of the 19th century, a logical extension of the American fascination with cake color. When marble cake first appeared, its dark swirls were produced through the addition of molasses, spice, and, in some recipes, raisins or currants. There are several variations on this theme. Harlequin cakes (in checkerboard patterns) take this cake to the next level. The simpler recipes were prepared using a single whole-egg batter, half of it darkened, but more ambitious recipes produced a more dramatic effect by making use of separate silver and gold batters, the latter darkened. Other bicolored cakes soon entered the scene. Hard-money cake was made by swirling silver and gold batters."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 162)
Another important discovery of this period was how to make chocolate efficiently. In 1764, Dr. James Baker deciphered the method to extract chocolate from cocoa beans by pulverizing them with millstones. By 1828, a mechanized extruder was invented by Conrad Van Houten from the Netherlands, which enabled the separation of the lipids from the cacao liquor. This yielded cocoa butter and pure cacao called "rock cacao," which could be sold whole or crushed into a powder.
And in 1879, legendary chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt from Switzerland stumbled upon the conching method, a type of purification process that removes odd flavors and excess water from chocolate through a lengthy whipping and aerating procedure. This created more homogenized, silky chocolate with a sophisticated flavor and made it easier to incorporate into a cake batter. Chocolate went from a product reserved for the rich to an everyday commodity that could be used by amateur and professional cake bakers alike.
In the first half of the 19th century the typical chocolate cake was a yellow or spice cake meant to accompany a chocolate beverage (hot chocolate, cocoa). Chocolate was not one of the cake's ingredients [Virginia Housewife, Mary Randolph (p. 173)]. In the second half of the 19th century the typical chocolate cake was either a white or yellow cake with chocolate icing or a cake made with chocolate. It is not until the middle of the 19th century we begin to see chocolate as an ingredient in baked goods (cookies, cakes). Recipes for rich, chocolate cakes similar to devil's food were fairly common in late 19th century cookbooks, but they were not named such. They were typically listed under the generic name "chocolate cake." Recipes for devil's food proliferated, sometimes with interesting and creative twists) in the first decades of the 20th century. There are several theories regarding why "devil's food" was selected for the name of this delicious cake. None of these are "definative."
Eliza Leslie published the earliest known chocolate cake recipe in 1847 in The Lady’s Receipt Book: see her recipe here: Chocolate Cake.
In 1902, the recipe for the first known Devil's Food Cake appeared in an American cookbook called Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book by Sarah Tyson Rorer. By 1913, recipes began appearing in cookbooks across America.
What is the difference between chocolate cake and devil's food? As noted above, the first 19th century American chocolate cake recipes were white/yellow cakes with chocolate icing (sort of like "coffee cake" with coffee) . The addition of chocolate to the batter increased as the price of this ingredient declined, thus creating "chocolate cake" as we know it today. 20th century cookbooks often list chocolate cake and devils food on the same page. The most predominant difference between the two? Devil's food usually contains a greater proportion of chocolate. Fannie Farmer [1923] doubles the amount of chocolate required for her devil's food (4 ounces compared to 2 ounces for "regular" chocolate cake.). Irma S. Rombauer confirms: "When the larger amount of chocolate is used, it is a black, rich Devil's Food." (Joy of Cooking, 1931 p. 236)
We do know that cake recipes with the name "angel food" began showing up in American cookbooks sometime in the late nineteenth century, about the same time as mass-produced bakeware hit the popular market (Angel-food cake was known by the 1870s in America and the word appeared in print in the 1880s). It may not be a coincidence that a proper angel food cake requires a special tube pan or cake mold. Angel Food cake differs from its predecessors in that it only uses egg whites, not the whole egg. To incorporate the ideal fluffiness needed to make this cake as light as air, the egg whites would need to get beaten for an extended period, which required intense labor before the invention of the rotary beater. Some food historians speculate the Pennsylvania Dutch were probably the original makers and namers of angel food and served as a sensible usage of leftover egg whites, though this connection has not been fully documented.
Rudimentary rotary beaters appeared on the market in 1865. These models were hand-cranked contraptions with a single beater that wasn't a marked improvement upon hand whisking. It wasn't until 1870 that Turner Williams of Providence, Rhode Island, introduced the dual whisk model, which notably expedited the egg white beating process. By 1884, a recipe for Angel Food cake was included in the debut cookbook published by the Boston Cooking School, permanently entering it into the annals of the American cake-baking legacy.
[1884] "Angel Cake One cup of flour, measured after one sifting, and then mixed with one teaspoonful of cream of tartar and sifted four times. Beat the whites of eleven eggs, with a wire beater or perforated spoon, until stiff and flaky. Add one cup and a half of the fine granulated sugar, and beat again; add one teaspoonful of vanilla or almond, then mix in the flour quickly and lightly. Line the bottom and funnel of a cake pan with paper not greased, pour in the mixture, and bake about forty minutes. When done, loosen the cake around the edge, and turn out at once. Some persons have been more successful with this cake by mixing the sugar with the flour and cream of tartar, and adding all at aonce to the beaten egg."
---The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln [1884] (p. 374)
Victorian Sandwich Cake
Mary Lincoln's White Almond Cake
According to most historians, the late 1800s were when the term “upside down cake” first began appearing. Up until that time, this type of cake was referred to as skillet cakes. This was because ovens have not always been common or reliable, skillet cakes were born of practicality. Cakes were made in the popular cast-iron skillets on top of the stove. Inverting a cake to reveal a topping was very popular as far back as the Middle Ages.The first upside-down cakes were not even made with pineapple, but with seasonal fruits such as apples and cherries, as the canned pineapple had not been invented yet. Canned pineapple manufacturing didn’t begin until 1901 when Jim Dole established the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Company) and began producing and marketing mass quantities of canned pineapple.
Layer Cakes
NO one knows for certain just how the layer cake originated, but it's easy to trace its rise.
Layer cakes as we know them first appeared around the latter half of the 1800's in the United States, said Stephen Schmidt, the author of ''Dessert in America,'' to be published next year by Scribner. But he said that the ''impulse to layer'' could be traced back to as early as the 1820's or even earlier, when cooks made what he said was the original model for the layer cake: the jelly cake. This was fashioned from a poundcake-like batter that was baked on a griddle into very thin layers that were then spread with jelly and stacked.
But what truly spawned the layer cake, later in the century, was the cast-iron stove, which gradually replaced less reliable brick hearths in American kitchens, said the culinary historian Karen Hess. The availability of baking powder, starting in the mid-1800's, also made cakes easier to tackle, she continued, adding, ''The oven and the use of chemical leaveners went hand and hand.''
Ms. Hess said that some of the earliest recipes for layer cakes were published in 1871 in ''Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book,'' one of the first cookbooks written for people who had those newfangled iron stoves. One recipe, for White Mountain Cake, filled and frosted with meringue, may offer a clue to the popularity of layer cakes for birthdays. The text accompanying it says that it ''is very nice indeed, particularly for weddings and parties.''
Maria Parloa's Appledore Cook Book, published in Boston in 1872, contained one of the first layer cake recipes (White Mountain Cake), which was frosted with a confectioner sugar frosting. “Beat to a froth the white of one egg. Beat into it, very gradually, one teacup of powdered sugar, and onescant tablespoonful of corn starch, and the juice ofone lemon. Spread this over the cake, then wet aclean knife in cold water and smooth the frostingwith it. Set in a warm, dry place to harden.” Another early recipe for layer cake was published in Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, published in London in 1894.
By the 1890's there were numerous recipes for fancy layer cakes filled with sherry-macerated dried fruits, preserves and whisky- or fruit-flavored curd. In well-off households on special occasions, the entire dining room sideboard would be filled with different layer cakes, their icings tinted pink, green or chocolate brown and festooned with rosettes, swags, nuts and glaceed cherries.
Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by the British food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. The recipe evolved from the classic pound cake made with equal proportions of flour, fat, sugar and eggs.
Mr. Schmidt brackets 1900 to the 1930's as the heyday of these kinds of cakes. Cookbooks of this era dedicate dozens of recipes to layer cakes, built six layers high, voluminously frosted and meant to be set on footed cake stands.
20th Century Cakes
Depression era cakes
The early half of the 20th century was a tumultuous time for America. Between World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, food scarcity and rationing significantly impacted the ability to bake a cake. During this era, bakers had to take their knowledge of the basic science of cake-making and adapt recipes with the ingredients they had on hand. From this ingenuity evolved some of the most unusual and delectable concoctions.
One of the first types of cake with this adaptation came from a 1918 pamphlet called "War Economy in Food." In a section dubbed "Recipes for Conservation Sweets," details for a "war cake" were included. This recipe utilized molasses and corn syrup instead of sugar, which was scarce during this time. Other recipes, like "wacky cake," "poor man's cake," and "mayonnaise cake," substituted butter, milk, and eggs with oil, vinegar, baking soda, and mayonnaise, to confer moisture and fluffiness to these cakes.
And in a particularly bold yet effective move, Campbell's condensed tomato soup in a can was transformed into what became known as "magic cake." This baking prestidigitation involved using the acid, pectin, and starch from the tomato soup base to leaven, sweeten, bind, and moisten this culinary delight. And tomatoes were not the only vegetable to find their way into the cake. Carrots were becoming a common substitution for sugar, setting the stage for what would eventually become one of the most popular cakes ever, the carrot cake.
Pineapple upside-down cake
In 1925, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company sponsored a contest calling for pineapple recipes with judges from the Fannie Farmer’s School, Good Housekeeping, and McCall’s Magazine on the judging panel. It is said that 2,500 of the 60,000 submissions were recipes for pineapple upside-down cake. The company decided to run an ad about the flood of pineapple upside-down cake recipes it had received, and the cake’s popularity increased!
Pineapple upside-down cakes began appearing in magazines, cookbooks, and advertisements. In 1927, a booklet was published called Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, Developed by the Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and written by Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman. The booklet was a compilation of 70 menus and about 300 recipes broadcast from October 1926 to June 1927 in the “Housekeepers’ Chat”programs of the radio service.
Dry baking mixes of all sorts were a product of the Industrial Revolution. They were promoted by companies as convenience foods. The first dry mixes (custard powders) were produced in England in the 1840s. Packaged mixes for gelatin (Jell-O, Royal, Knox) were introduced in the late 19th century. Pancake mixes (Aunt Jemima) were available in the 1890s. Our sources indicate packaged mixes for cake were introduced in 1920's. Packaged mixes for biscuits (Bisquick/General Mills) were introduced in the 1930s. Betty Crocker/General Mills made them famous in the late 1940s. Now we have mixes for Tiramasu, Pineapple-Upside-Down-Cake and even more complicated items.
Chiffon Cake
Chiffon cake is a light confection made with salad oil instead of butter. It has been described as a cross between angel food and rich butter cakes. Food historians generally credit Harry Baker, a Los Angeles insurance salesman, for the "invention" of this new cake in the 1920s. Mr. Baker sold the recipe to General Mills in the 1940s. The corporate version of this cake, promoting two of General Mill's products Softasilk Flour and Wesson Oil, debuted in 1948.
A survey of cookbooks and magazine/newpaper articles confirms Chiffon cake was agressively promoted from the late 1940s to early 1960s. General Mills blitzed the media with Chiffon cake ads (including recipes) beginning in 1948. The earliest mention in the New York Times states: "Cake No. 1 is high and handsome, yellow as an Easter chick, faintly orange-flavored, delicate and most, tender crusted. It's made in the manner of the new General Mills' chiffon cake, which almost every one seems to applaud." (March 22, 1948, p. 26).
