Week 3—Corn Meal Cakes (c. 1849)

Source: Putnam, Mrs. "Corn Meal Cakes." Recipe. Mrs. Putnam's receipt book; and young housekeeper's assistant. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1849, pp. 4. Book.

For the third week, it was time to change it up a bit... with cake!

Or, uh... I think it's cake?

Something that historians, archivists, and researchers can often inevitably face is the fact that words as we commonly know them today did not always hold the same meaning, nor even the same use, as they did in the past. We touched upon this briefly in the "corn" discussion of Week 1, but whereas that had been a difference in definition that merely became colloquial for us, this week, an interesting occurrence to highlight is where ambiguity plays a factor in modern interpretation.

If you think about it, what defines a "cake"? What are the traits that must be present or the steps that must be taken to make a cake?

According to the Oxford Companion to Food, a cake is:

a baked flour confection sweetened with sugar or honey; it is mixed with eggs and often, but not invariably, with milk and fat; and it has a porous texture from the mixture rising during cooking.

However, if a cake is defined by its essential ingredients (flour, sugar, eggs, milk and/or butter...), would that not mean that something like Brioche bread or a croissant is also a cake? Would that not mean it is no longer one when any of those ingredients are absent, such as, for example, in a flourless chocolate cake? If cake hinges on the leavening agent (baking powder or baking soda instead of yeast), what about a traditional Streuselkuchen, a yeast-dough crumb cake from Germany? What about Irish soda bread, or cornbread, which both hold the bread moniker but use baking powder and soda instead of yeast?

The discussion here can go on endlessly, but the point is that perfectly defining something like cake is rarely straightforward. But, does it matter? For the most part, we can believe people from similar circumstances should be able to equally recognize a basic cake today, even with noticeable differences.

However, this is the exact problem that arises when reading material from almost two centuries ago.

Back then, people also had an understanding of cake, and it was incredibly common for people not to feel the need to spell out something that was thought to be common knowledge at the time. As knowledge always changes and evolves, however, past references can become unrecognizable. This leaves us wondering whether their ideas about cake are the same as ours. It's hard to tell. Take this example from an 1848 Weekly Herald issue;

Source: The Weekly Herald and Conception-Bay General Advertiser, February 9, 1848 (pp. 1)

Even while being called "cake," it seems pretty evident—based on the instruction to cook it in a well greased pan (rather than a tin) and to bake on both sides, implying having to flip the item—that this recipe describes something more similar to our modern, North American understanding of "pancakes." Does that mean that this is not a cake at all? Not exactly, but it was also not likely the first kind of "cake" many imagined when I posed the question at the start.

I chose to use this recipe that I interpreted as referencing a cake as it would be commonly identified today. I made this decision due to the instructions for baking it in a tin pan, as I assumed they meant something like a cake tin. But, there is nothing to say that it may not have been a muffin pan, either. There's not really a clear answer here, but this is why we call it interpretation. This is my interpretation of a cornmeal cake, while someone else may have an entirely different one.

I'll pose the question to you, now: would you consider this a cake? Or, how might you have made it differently? I'd love to hear from you.

Ingredients

• One quart (4 cups) of milk

• 1/4 lb. (4 oz.) of butter, at room temperature

• Four eggs, at room temperature

• 1/2 tea-spoonful of salt

• 1/2 cup of sugar, optional

• Four to six cups of cornmeal, separated

Note: I used the trusty 8x8" Square Baking Dish once more for this recipe, and let me tell you, it makes a lot. Completely filled, I estimated I still had enough for two, if not three, additional pans besides the one I had been testing, depending on how abundantly or scarcely I filled them. The cornmeal swells quite a lot in this recipe the longer it is made to wait, so don't underestimate just how much you can get out of this. I also found this cake quite salty when it was done, so I strongly advise only using half of the salt, as I noted above, if not even less. The primary taste of this cake is the cornmeal itself, so I don't feel like it will miss it. It is also quite a dry cake, so I made a simple blueberry syrup, greatly improving the dryness. I'll note how to make that in the method section, below.

Method

1. Preheat an oven to 350°F.

2. Add the milk, butter, eggs, salt, and optional sugar, if using. (I did!) Having everything at room temperature allows for easier mixing.

3. Mix well before slowly adding the cornmeal; I started by adding 4 cups, which was necessary for it to become a batter at all. Cornmeal does soak and swell, so you should let it rest for a few minutes (I did about five) after these initial 4 cups to see how much the batter thickens.

4. If it is still rather soupy, slowly add the remaining two cups of cornmeal, one at a time. I needed 6 cups before I found my batter adequately thick. However, humidity and the time allowed for the cornmeal to soak could influence these factors greatly.

5. As the batter is resting, you can take the time to prepare a baking tin.

6. Once thick to a satisfying level—mine was roughly the texture of a very soft cookie-dough—spoon the batter into your baking tin, smoothing it out and to the sides. I filled mine about an inch and a half deep.

7. Cook for about 30 minutes.

8. While the cake is cooking, you can prepare a simple blueberry syrup to accompany it. I used equal parts blueberry and water, simmering in a pot on the stove until the blueberries burst and the water turned dark pink/purple. You can add some sugar to it, but you don't need to. Poured on top of the cake, it becomes quite lovely.

As mentioned, this is an incredibly dry cake—but it's not a bad one! I've never had cornbread before, so I can't speak to the similarities—although comparisons have been made—but I enjoyed this, despite the dryness. I tried it both with and without the blueberry syrup and found that local blueberries were quite lovely with it.