A Pound is a Pound is a Pound Cake

     Sitting with my coffee and musing over things that make me go “hmmmmm”, I  mentally flitted around until I landed on Pound Cake. The name conjures a multitude of images. The most practical interpretation  is one of beating this confection into submission before baking (certainly one wouldn’t do it afterward….that would be crumb cake). Perhaps it’s created by the forced labor of poor cats and dogs impounded for roaming the streets and then sold for their upkeep. Could it refer to the British monetary cost of one Pound per cake? Then again it could be a “moment on the lips, a pound on the hips”  visual explanation. Our savvy Sugarmeisters probably already know it’s none of the above. The real account is simple, practical and most important, memorable.

     Once more, we will travel back in time to the early 1700’s. The place is Britain and the need is for cake. Imagine yourself, a typical housewife, trying to put something sweet on the table for the family (of 13) and you’ve misplaced your Betty Crocker Cookbook. Therein lies your first complication, not an abundance of printed cookbooks. Toss in the probability that you don’t read and that makes the last point moot. Reliance on verbally passed down recipes is always dicey. Did Mom say a taste of spice and a gill (an actual measurement of the time) of rosewater or a gill of spice and a taste of rosewater? What was required were simple ingredients, simple measurements for simply delicious. The original recipe contained  one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Hence it’s moniker, Pound cake. Now that’s a cake you can live off of for a while or share with the entire shire. Given the sizable cake this made, it’s not surprising that the ingredients were  eventually adjusted to produce a more manageable portion. Easily done with a 1:1:1:1 ratio of the four basic ingredients.

     For fun, or for purists, I am including an original 1747 recipe. Notice that along with Pound cake, this could have been called Hour cake as you were directed to beat (by hand!) for an hour and bake for an hour.

     [1747]
"To make a Pound Cake
Take a Pound of Butter, beat it in an earthen Pan, with your Hand one Way, till it is like a fine thick Cream; then have ready twelve Eggs, but hald the Whites, beat them well, and beat them up with the Butter, a Pound of Flour beat in it, and a Pound of Sugar, and a few Carraways; beat it all well together for an Hour with your Hand, or a great wooden Spoon. Butter a Pan, and put it in and bake it an Hour in a quick Oven. For Change, you may put in a Pound of Currants cleaned wash'd and pick'd."
---The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, facsimile 1747 London reprint [Prospect Books:Devon] 1995 ( p. 139)


     Over the years, bakers have continued to tinker with the elements of the Pound cake and certainly there are variations internationally. There have been a few additions, vanilla or almond extract, dried fruits, leavening agents such as baking soda or baking powder, and a few substitutions such as vegetable oil or sour cream for the butter. Some of these variations hold very little similarity to the original  taste and texture of yesteryear but still claim the name. There’s no doubt that the Pound cake, dressed up or dressed down, still commands respect and demand to this day.

by Chewy-bacca-nista