Pound Cake
One of Mrs. Goodfellow’s maxims was, “up-weight of flour, and down-weight of every thing else”—and she was right, as the excellence of her cakes sufficiently proved, during the thirty years that she taught her art in Philadelphia, with unexampled success. Therefore, allow for a pound cake a rather small pound of sifted flour; a large pound of the best fresh butter, a large pound of powdered loaf sugar, ten eggs, or eleven if they are small; a large glass of mixed wine and brandy; a glass of rose-water; a grated nutmeg, and a heaped tea-spoonful of mixed spice, powdered mace, and cinnamon. Put the sugar into a deep earthen pan, and cut up the butter among it. In cold weather place it near the fire a few minutes, till the butter softens. Next, stir it very hard with a spaddle till the mixture becomes very light. Next, stir in, gradually, the spice, liquor, &c. Then beat the eggs in a shallow pan with rods or a whisk, till light, thick, and smooth. Add them gradually to the beaten batter and sugar, in turn with the flour; and give the whole a hard stirring at the last. Have the oven ready with a moderate heat. Transfer the mixture to a thick straight-sided tin pan well greased with the best fresh butter, and smooth the butter on the surface. Set it immediately into the oven, and bake it with a steady heat two hours and a half, or more. Probe it to the bottom with a twig from a corn broom. When it shrinks a little from the pan it is done. When taken out, set it to cool on an inverted sieve. When you ice it, flavor the icing with lemon or rose.
It should be eaten fresh, as it soon becomes very dry.
Pound cake is not so much in use as formerly, particularly for weddings and large parties; lady cake and plum cake being now substituted. A pound cake may be much improved by the addition of a pound of citron, sliced, chopped well, dredged with flour to prevent its sinking, and stirred gradually into the batter, in turn with the sifted flour and beaten egg.