the.com/pound cake
A dessert whose recipe was a memorized shopping list before anyone could read.
means A dense, rich, buttery cake traditionally flavored simply and baked in a loaf or bundt shape, prized for its tight crumb and keeping quality.
from The name is wonderfully literal: the original recipe called for a pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs — four ingredients, one easy-to-remember ratio. It comes to us from England in the 1700s, when such a foolproof formula could be carried in the head and passed cook to cook without anything written down. The proportions made it a staple long before kitchen scales and printed cookbooks were common, and the recipe traveled to colonial America under the same plain, honest name.
- origin name
- A pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, flour
- date
- Recipe printed in England by the 1700s
- no leavening
- Original versions used only whipped air to rise
- global cousins
- French quatre-quarts means four quarters
- dense by design
- Heavy crumb was the whole point
proust's madeleine cake — the butter cake dipped in tea that triggered involuntary memory in in search of lost time
starbucks pound cake — yellow butter cake sold in us stores since the 1990s, one of their signature baked goods