The complete servant / Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables

by servant Samuel Adams; Sarah Adams

The following is a receipt for making a good plain cake, to be given to children, at breakfast, instead of buttered bread.

Take as much dough as will make a quartern-loaf (either made at home, or procured at the baker’s), work into this a quarter of a pound of butter, a quarter of a pound of moist sugar, and a handful of caraway seeds. When well worked together, pull into pieces the size of a golden pippin, and work it together again. This must be done three times or it will be in lumps, and heavy when baked.

3. ICEING FOR CAKES.

Put one pound of fine-sifted, treble refined sugar into a basin, and the whites of three new-laid eggs; beat the sugar and eggs up well with a silver spoon until it becomes very white and thick; dust the cake over with flour, and then brush it off, by way of taking the grease from the outside, which prevents the iceing from running; put it on smooth with a palette knife, and garnish according to fancy: any ornaments should be put on immediately; for if the iceing gets dry, it will not stick on. Set it in a cool oven to harden.

4. A RICH SEED CAKE.

Take a pound and a quarter of flour well dried, a pound of butter, a pound of loaf sugar, beat and sifted, eight eggs and two ounces of caraway seeds, one grated nutmeg, and its weight in cinnamon. Beat the butter into a cream, put in the sugar, beat the whites of the eggs and the yolks separately, then mix them with the butter and sugar. Beat in the flour, spices, and seed, a little before sending it away. Bake it two hours in a quick oven.

5. A PLAIN POUND CAKE.

Beat one pound of butter in an earthen pan until it is like a fine thick cream, then beat in nine whole eggs till quite light. Put in a glass of brandy, a little lemon peel, shred fine, then work in a pound and a quarter of flour; put it into the hoop or pan and bake it for an hour. A pound plum cake is made the same with putting one pound and a half of clean washed currants and half a pound of candied lemon peel.

6. RATAFIA CAKES.

Beat half a pound each of sweet and bitter almonds in fine orange, rose, or ratafia water, mix half a pound of fine pounded and sifted sugar with the same, add the whites of four eggs well beaten to it, set it over a moderate fire in a preserving-pan. Stir it one way until it is pretty hot, and when a little cool form it into small rolls, and cut into thin cakes. Shake some flour lightly on them, give each a light tap, and put them on sugar papers, sift a little sugar on them, and put them into a thorough slack oven.