[Sca-cooks] Reasons why period cakes aren't modern cakes

David Friedman ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Thu Oct 3 18:29:25 PDT 2013


Are you saying that Ammonium carbonate was used as a chemical leavening 
in SCA period? I wasn't aware of it.

On 10/3/13 5:39 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Stefan li Rous wrote:
>> ...I thought one paragraph in there brought home why a period cake is not a modern cake and
>> vice-versa.
>>
>> <<< Although the cake has a reputation as being difficult to make, this is no longer true.[3] When the recipe originated, there were no stand mixers, nor electric hand mixers, and even hand-crank eggbeaters were not universally available, which meant a lot of hard labor beating egg whites to frothy soft peaks. The wood-fired ovens of the time had no thermostats, making it difficult to produce a white cake. Modern refrigeration also makes it easier to produce a stiff filling, allowing one to build an orderly multi-layer cake, rather than a sticky, lopsided dessert. >>>
> To me another significant difference is the lack of chemical leavening. There was what is now called Baker's Ammonia (Ammonium Carbonate), but that only works in fairly thin things - cookies, wafers, etc. (& it still is used in some northern European baking). There are late period cakes leavened with yeast, but they will have a VERY different texture than a modern chemically leavened cake. The things often called "cakes" in late period cookbooks are close to what we call "cookies".
>
> Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM!)
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David Friedman
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http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/




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