Measure Pound Cake (Leslie Fox)

History

"Measure Pound Cake" is one of two recipes Martha McCulloch-Williams credits to Leslie Fox in "Dishes & Beverages of the Old South" (1913). The name marks the difference from a true pound cake: this one is measured by the cup rather than weighed pound-for-pound. A cup of butter is creamed well with one and three-quarter cups of sugar, and then the yolks go in one at a time — "drop in an egg-yolk unbeaten, beat hard, put in another yolk, beat again hard, then another, and repeat the hard beating." Two and a half cups of flour and a cup of milk follow alternately, with a final half cup of flour sifted three times with baking powder.

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular recipe. What the recipe does show is a named woman's method, recorded under her own name in 1913.

The book credits several women this way — Leslie Fox twice, alongside Betsy Vaughn, Aunt Polly Rives and Dorothy Dix. The Black cook who taught the author her kitchen is credited with five recipes and never named, appearing only by a household role-title.

McCulloch-Williams was a white writer born near Clarksville, Tennessee, who grew up on a plantation before the Civil War; the book's dedication is "to our Mammys," and its affection for that world goes unexamined in it.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 egg whites
• 1 1/2 tablespoons brandy

Instructions

1. Cream well together one cup butter and one and three-quarter cups sugar.
2. When very light, drop in an egg-yolk unbeaten, beat hard; put in another yolk, beat again hard; then another, and repeat the hard beating.
3. When very light add alternately two and one-half cups flour, and one cup milk. Mix well.
4. Then add half a cup flour sifted three times with three even teaspoonfuls baking powder.
5. Follow this with the egg-whites beaten stiff.
6. Flavor with brandy — a tablespoonful and a half.
7. Bake in a moderate oven about an hour.
8. Serve with any approved pudding sauce, or use as other cake.