Water Sponge Cake

Guess which ingredient she forgot to include?

Fortunately, there’s a recipe for hot water sponge cake in Fannie Merritt Farmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book:

Hot Water Sponge Cake Yolks 2 eggs 1 cup sugar 3/8 cup hot water or milk 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract   Whites two eggs 1 cup flour 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Beat yolks of eggs until thick and lemon-colored, add one-half the sugar gradually, and continue beating; then add water, remaining sugar, lemon extract, whites of eggs beaten until stiff, and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder and salt. Bake twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven in a buttered and floured shallow pan.

 
So why water? Well, remember that this is a notebook from a student learning homemaking in 1915? Here’s a snippet from 1915’s The Science of Home Making: A Textbook in Home Economics:

Compare the recipes for sponge cake and the hot water sponge cake. Compare the cost of four eggs with the cost of one and one-half teaspoonfuls of baking powder.

 
Mmmm, okay. I will.

Around 1915, four eggs cost a little over eleven cents. Judging by ads around those days, for about the same price, you could get two-thirds of a pound of baking powder.

Now, a pound of baking powder would be around two cups in volume. So two-thirds of a pound would be one and one-third cups, or 64 teaspoons.

So to answer the original question, four eggs cost about 11 cents, and a teaspoon and a half of baking powder cost about a quarter of a single cent. Or, to look at it another way, for the cost of the four eggs, you would have enough baking powder to make 42 full cakes with a teaspoon left over.

Adjusted for inflation, the 1915 numbers are that four eggs cost the equivalent of $2.53 in 2012 dollars, while a teaspoon and a half of baking powder cost six cents in 2012 dollars.

Even though the price of eggs has come down, it’s still a substantially cheaper recipe. Four eggs cost about eighty cents, at least. Meanwhile, assuming a .79, half-cup size (converting from weight) container of baking powder, a teaspoon and a half of baking powder costs… a little over eleven cents.

For a larger version of this scan, click here.

From the notebook of J.L. from Avon Lake, Ohio. Dated 1915.