a cake of the creamed type, is so named because the recipe calls for an equal weight of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs; in old recipes, a pound of each, making a large, rich cake. Beaten egg is relied on to raise the cake. Sometimes the eggs are separated, the whites beaten separately and folded in just before baking to enhance their raising power.
Pound cake has been favoured in both Britain and the USA for over two centuries. Recipes for it were already current early in the 18th century, for example that given by Richard Bradley (1736).
Barbara Maher (1982), in an elegant chapter on this class of cake, quotes a delightful passage from James Beard (1974):
I remember that when I was young, my mother always had a pound cake in the larder. One week it would be a caraway seed cake, with the little pungent flecks pushing through the smooth golden-yellow cake. Another week it might be a citron cake, with thin slivers of citron on the top (never mixed in, lest they sink to the bottom). Sometimes there were chopped walnuts in our cake, or ginger, which gave it an exotic, spicy flavour. Pound cake was our standby. We had it for tea, toasted for breakfast, and as a foundation for fruit desserts, with fresh or poached berries, poached plums or peaches, and slathers of heavy cream poured over everything.
The German Sandtorte is similar to pound cake; and a French cake, quatre quarts (four quarters), uses the same principles, elaborated by an initial beating of the egg yolks with sugar to help cake texture. Various flavourings are added to the basic mixtures, such as brandy, rosewater, spice, or orange rind.
Cherry cake, popular in Britain, is essentially a variation of pound cake. Glacé cherries are added to the mixture before baking.
See also Madeira cake.
Laura Mason has written about several aspects of British food in books including Sugar Plums and Sherbet (1998), Farmhouse Cookery (2005), and Traditional Foods of Britain (1999), which she co-authored with Catherine Brown.
Beard, James (1974), Beard on Food, New York: Alfred Knopf.
Bradley, Richard (1736), The Country Housewife and Lady's Director, Parts I and II, facsimile of 6th edn in one vol, London: Prospect Books (1980).
Maher, Barbara (1982), Cakes, London: Jill Norman & Hobhouse.
