Pound Cake Recipe Leads Recipe Box Lineup

Enlarge Image Image Gallery An Old-Fashioned Pound Cake Recipe has many variations in this issue's Recipe Box. Lori Dunn

In England Back in the 1700s, most cakes were simply breads sweetened with whatever sweetening was available. Then along came the pound cake. Since most of the population was unable to read, the recipe for pound cake was an easy one to pass on verbally: 1 pound of flour, 1 pound of butter, 1 pound of sugar and 1 pound of eggs.

The first known written recipe for pound cake appeared in the 1740s. One of the earliest, in 1747, appeared in The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse. It included 12 eggs and a few caraway seeds, was beaten for an hour by hand or with a “great wooden spoon,” and was then baked for an hour in a quick oven. It also added this note, “For Change, you may put in a Pound of Currants cleaned wash’d and pick’d.”

As you can imagine, this created a fairly large cake, and cooks being cooks, the recipe was tweaked as time rolled by, both for size and for taste. A leavening agent was added when those were invented in the 19th century, and cookbooks started to include the ingredients in more precise measurements: 2 cups sugar, at least 6 eggs, 3 1/2 cups flour, and 4 sticks butter, or in smaller measurements. As long as the four main ingredients are added in a 1:1:1:1 ratio, the cake will turn out terrific.

In the 1800s, recipes show the additions of brandy, wine, lemon peel, nutmeg, currants, candied peel, citron, sweet almonds or mace, and a couple substitute confectioner’s sugar for granulated sugar. Modern-day cooks have tweaked it even further with salt, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla or almond extract, sour cream, and/or milk, and we bake it in a low oven for more than an hour.

It makes a dense, moist cake that’s perfect any time. Serve it with coffee or hot cocoa, at breakfast or for a lunch dessert topped with fresh berries and/or cream, put an icing on it and slice it thin for dinner dessert, or just grab a plain slice for a midnight snack. It’ll satisfy your sweet tooth no matter what.

POUND CAKE RECIPES: 

Denise Hix, Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, would like the recipe for a pound cake that included 12 eggs, flour, sugar, milk, salt and butter. 

Old-Fashioned Pound Cake Recipe From Texas
Original Pound Cake Recipe
Old-Fashioned Pound Cake Recipe From Wisconsin