History of Pound Cake

A Pound Cake is a rich, dense cake that has traditionally been a popular dessert in the southern United States. It is said to be originated in the 1700s in England and was included in Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy published in 1747. Its first printed mention was in 1740 according to Webster's Ninth.

Hannah Glasse’s Recipe for Pound Cake, 1747

Take a pound of butter, beat it in an earthen pan with your hand one way, till it is like a fine thick cream, then have ready twelve eggs, but half the whites; beat them well, and beat them up with the butter, a pound of flour beat in it, a pound of sugar, and a few carraways. Beat it all well together for an hour with your hand, or a great wooden spoon, butter a pan and put it in, and then bake it an hour in a quick oven. For change, you may put in a pound of currants, clean washed and picked.

The name Pound Cake comes from the fact that the original pound cakes were made from equal portions (a pound each) of butter, sugar, eggs (about 8 large eggs weighing 2 oz each), and flour. The original recipe did not include other ingredients (such as leavener) other than the air whipped into the batter. This simple and easy to remember recipe made it a favored dessert in the days when many people could not read. A cake made of 1 pound of each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour would have been very large and would have been able to serve multiple families.

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)

However, the recipe began to evolve in the late 18th and early 19th century and made gradual breaks from the original cake. With the invention of rising agents (such as baking powder) as well as the inclusion of liquids such as milk and alcohols, the cake became more moist, light, and flavorous, but retained the “pound cake” name. Artificial leaveners (baking powder/soda) were added in the 1900s. Today orange zest is added to give it a burst of flavor; chocolate to make it more, well, chocolatey, sour cream to make more moist, etc.

Although pound cake was known to other western European countries in mid-1700s and was called by several names such as Quatre-Quarts in French, Queque Seco in Spainsh, and Sandkuchen in German. The French versions are more likely to have the egg whites beaten separately. English-speaking cooks tend to add the eggs whole. Both approaches have their positive point and downside: if you separate the eggs and beat the whites separately, you will get a lighter cake, but it will be less moist than a recipe in which the eggs were added whole. Whatever the approach, the eggs should be room temperature before starting so that more air will get into them.

In French-speaking parts of the Caribbean, particularly in places such as Martinique and Guadeloupe, Pound Cake with rum added is served on Christmas Eve. Sometimes a mashed, ripe banana is added as well for extra moistness. There, too, as in France, the egg whites will be beaten separately.

In the UK, Pound Cakes tend to be made round. In North America, it is more common to bake them in a loaf pan.

It was first introduced to the American populace by Amelia Simmons through her cookbook American Cookery published in 1796, which was the first cookbook authored by an American and published in the United States. Simmons’ pound cake included rose water and spices in addition to original four ingredients, thus marking the beginning of an evolutionary trend over years in which the recipe for pound cake would be constantly modified for differing flavors and textures.

Over time, pound cake became much more popular in the southern states as evidenced by their inclusion in Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife and Abby Fisher’s What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. Abby Fisher, who was enslaved in South Carolina before making her way to San Francisco after the Civil War, helped popularize pound cake in the South when she included not one, but two pound cake recipes in her 1881 cookbook What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. Fisher’s book was the first known cookbook written by an African American. The subsequent cookbooks published throughout the southern states continued to deviate from the original “a pound each” recipe, tweaking the ratio to include extra ingredients such as brandy, mace, vanilla, lemon, nutmeg, etc.

Mary Randolph's Pound Cake, The Virginia House-wife, 1824

Wash the salt from a pound of butter and rub it till it is soft as cream, have ready a pound of flour sifted, one of powdered sugar, and twelve eggs well beaten; put alternately into the butter, sugar, flour, and the froth from the eggs: continuing to beat them together till all the ingredients are in, and the cake quite light; add some grated lemon peel, a nutmeg, and a gill of brandy; butter pans and bake them.

Note: 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. This probably why the redacted recipe below uses regular sugar, not powdered sugar as we know it today. 1 pound of sugar is 2 cups.

Mary Randolph’s Pound Cake (redacted)

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
3 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 cup brandy

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 10-inch Bundt or tube pan with vegetable shortening.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer (or in a large bowl, beating by hand or with a mixer), cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, beating continuously.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating each in thoroughly.

4. Sift the flour with the nutmeg, then gradually add to the butter and sugar mixture (about 1/2 cup at a time), mixing thoroughly after each addition.

5. Add the lemon zest and brandy, and mix until well combined.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45-60 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely. Serve with fruit and whipped cream or a sweet sauce.