Pound Cake
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Pound cake is a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients:
flour Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many culture ...
,
butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment ...
,
egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...
s, and
sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt mold. They are sometimes served either dusted with powdered sugar, lightly glazed, or with a coat of icing.


History

It is believed that the pound cake is of northern European origin and dates back to the early 1700s. A recipe for pound cake is in the first U.S. cookbook, '' American Cookery'', which was published in 1796. Over time the ingredients for pound cake changed.
Eliza Leslie Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), frequently referred to as Miss Leslie, was an American author of popular cookbooks during the nineteenth century. She also wrote household management books, etiquette books, novels, short stories and articles for magazin ...
, who wrote the 1851 edition of Direction for Cookery, used 10 eggs, beat them as lightly as possible, mixed them with a pound of flour, then added the juice of two lemons or three large oranges. This changed the flavor and texture of the cake. In the 2008 issue of ''Saveur'', James Villas wrote that cake flour would not work in place of all-purpose flour because it lacks the strength to support the heavy batter. An early variation on this cake replaced some of the flour with cornmeal made from dried corn (
maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
), which was then called ''Indian meal''. A recipe for Indian pound cake was first published in 1828 by Eliza Leslie and later included in ''The Indian Meal Book'', which was published in London in 1846, when people in Ireland were looking for alternatives to expensive
wheat flour Wheat flour is a powder made from the grinding of wheat used for human consumption. Wheat varieties are called "soft" or "weak" if gluten content is low, and are called "hard" or "strong" if they have high gluten content. Hard flour, or ''bread ...
.


Variations

There are numerous variations on the traditional pound cake, with certain countries and regions having distinctive styles. These can include the addition of flavoring agents (such as
vanilla extract Vanilla extract is a Solution (chemistry), solution made by maceration (food), macerating and percolation, percolating vanilla, vanilla pods in a solution of ethanol and water. It is considered an essential ingredient in many Western desserts, es ...
or almond extract) or dried fruit (such as currants or dried cranberries), as well as alterations to the original recipe to change the characteristics of the resulting pound cake. For instance,
baking soda Sodium bicarbonate (IUPAC name: sodium hydrogencarbonate), commonly known as baking soda or bicarbonate of soda, is a chemical compound with the formula NaHCO3. It is a salt composed of a sodium cation ( Na+) and a bicarbonate anion ( HCO3∠...
or
baking powder Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. Baking powder is used to increas ...
may be incorporated to induce
leavening In cooking, a leavening agent () or raising agent, also called a leaven () or leavener, is any one of a number of substances used in doughs and batters that cause a foaming action (gas bubbles) that lightens and softens the mixture. An altern ...
during baking, resulting in a less dense pound cake. A cooking
oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
(typically a
vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of fruits. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, or fat ...
) is sometimes substituted for some or all of the butter, which is intended to produce a moister cake. Sour cream pound cake is a popular variation in the United States, which involves the substitution of
sour cream Sour cream (in North American English, Australian English and New Zealand English) or soured cream (British English) is a dairy product obtained by fermenting regular cream with certain kinds of lactic acid bacteria. The bacterial culture, wh ...
for some of the butter, which also is intended to produce a moister cake with a tangy flavor. Some of these variations may drastically change the texture and flavor of the pound cake, but the name pound cake is often still used. Some of the variations are described below.


French style

In
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, the pound cake is well known. The name of the pound cake , means four quarters. There are equal weights in each of the four quarters. In tradition, the popular cake of the French region of
Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...
, as its name implies, uses the same quantity of the four ingredients, but with no added fruit of any kind. However, the Caribbean parts of the world that speak French traditionally add rum to the ingredients for Christmas Eve or even mashed bananas for extra moisture. In some cases, the French might have beaten egg whites instead of whole eggs to lighten the batter. Other variants include adding chocolate or lemon juice for flavor.


Mexican style

In
Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, the pound cake is called '. The basic recipe of Mexican ' is much like the traditional U.S. recipe. Most common variants are ' (pound cake with walnuts) and ' (pound cake with raisins).


Colombian and Venezuelan style

''Ponqué'' is the Colombian and Venezuelan version of the pound cake: the term is itself a Spanish phonetic approximation of ''pound-cake''. The ''ponqué'' is essentially a wine-drenched cake with a cream or sugar coating, and it is very popular at birthdays, weddings and other social celebrations.


German style

The German term '' Rührkuchen'' (stirred cake) refers to any kind of cake where a batter is made by mixing flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and often milk. The concept of the first four ingredients having equal proportions is not common, but, nevertheless, this style of cake batter forms the basis of many popular cake recipes. With the simple addition of nuts, cocoa, dried fruits and alcohols, and the use of different shapes and sizes of tins, a wide variety of traditional German cakes are made. For example, this dough or a minor variation of it is often used to make cakes made in a loaf tin (' - orange cake; ' - hazelnut cake), marbled cakes in a bundt tin (' ) and other flavor combinations in shaped tins (' - fake venison saddle with bitter chocolate and almonds, ''Osterlamm'' - Easter Lamb with vanilla and rum). In the technical language of professional baking, these recipes are classified as ''Eischwerteig mit Fett'' ("egg-heavy batter with shortening"). For example, in a German cooks' vocational school book from the 1980s the basic recipe for such a cake baked in a 26 cm (10") spring form tin is given as four eggs, three egg-weights of butter, four egg-weights of sugar, three egg weights of flour and one egg-weight of starch. It is close to the English pound of each and the French four equal quarters.


References


External links

* http://www.cooksinfo.com/pound-cake {{English cuisine British cakes Butter cakes American cakes French cakes German cakes Mexican desserts Cakes