Tag: cakes

All-Fat Salt Pork Sweet Cake From 1906

All-Fat Salt Pork Sweet Cake From 1906

Another version of a pork cake using salt pork, this one coming from Baxter’s Practical Up-to-date Receipt Book for Bakers by Richard Baxter. This recipe calls for currants, “all-fat” salt pork chopped fine, and molasses. The salt pork is dissolved in boiling water before the 

Chocolate Marshmallow Roll

Chocolate Marshmallow Roll

This beautiful recipe comes from the 1950 mini cookbook, Here Are the Cakes America Loves – Royal Cakes made with Royal Cream of Tartar Baking Powder. The cake consists of a chocolate jelly roll cake, and filled with a marshmallow filling. There is a variation 

Cutting a Cake: 1906 Instructions Based on Scientific Principles

Cutting a Cake: 1906 Instructions Based on Scientific Principles

Purely for fun, Sir Francis Galton, (FRS, knighted in 1909), described in the publication Nature in 1906 how to cut a cake in a way “so as to leave a minimum of exposed surface to become dry”. Essentially, you cut out the middle, push the remaining cake halves together. Then, you keep cutting the center parts and pushing the remainder together to as to keep the center moist. Have we been doing it all wrong?

From Sir Francis Galton, 1906:

Cutting a Round Cake on Scientific Principles.

Christmas suggests cakes, and these the wish on my part to describe a method of cutting them that I have recently devised to my own amusement and satisfaction. The problem to be solved was, “given a round tea-cake of some 5 inches across, and two persons of moderate appetite to eat it, in what way should it be cut so as to leave a minimum of exposed surface to become dry?” The ordinary method of cutting out a wedge is very fault in this respect. The results to be aimed at are so to cut the cake that the remaining portions shall fit together. Consequently the chords (or the arcs) of the circumferences of these portions must be equal. The direction of the first two vertical planes of section is unimportnat; they may be parallel, as in the first figure, or they may enclose a wedge. The cuts shown on the figures represent those made with the intention of letting the cake last for three days, each successive operation having removed about one-third of the area of the original disc. A common india-rubber band embraces the whole and keeps its segments together.

Wartime Pork Recipes and Old Fashioned Pork Cake Recipe Using Salt Pork from 1927

Wartime Pork Recipes and Old Fashioned Pork Cake Recipe Using Salt Pork from 1927

Pork is known as the other white meat. During WWII and the Depression Era pork was a source of protein nourishment and people were encouraged to use the entire pig for food. The image shown here has many recipes for pork using not only parts 

Water Melon Cake (1890)

Water Melon Cake (1890)

Like the fresh watermelon from the vine, this old recipe from 1890, (The Model Cookbook), has a pink interior with ‘seeds’ made up of raisins. The cake is flavored with rose water, a flavoring not used much today but would be a lovely touch for