You CAN have your cake and it too!

This week at culinary school, we were introduced to the “gâteau quatre-quarts”. The literal translation of this is “four-quarters” or “four-fourths” cake. I thought this a very strange name for a cake, though names for other French pastries have befuddled me in the past. Like the “opéra” (not related to anything musically inclined), the “éclair” (has nothing to do with an electrostatic discharge), or the “mille feuille” (seriously, is ANYONE going to count them???) But I digress.     

The “gateau quatre-quarts”, explained my pastry instructor, is named for the fact that the recipe is made up of equal parts of four ingredients: flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. In fact, it’s the weight of the eggs that determines the weight of the other ingredients. So if you have 100 g of eggs, you need an equal amount of flour, sugar, and butter. Apparently, you can change the quantities to reduce or increase the recipe and, as long as you use equal proportions of every ingredient, your cake will come out perfect every time. (Must test this theory one day.) If you think about it, it’s probably the simplest cake in the world to make. So it wasn’t until the darn thing was pulled out of the oven that I realized the “quatre-quarts” was in fact… wait for it… a pound cake! 

So THAT’S how you make a pound cake! Honestly, I’d never made one until then. This led me to go in search of the cake’s origins, and what I found was pretty interesting, and confusing. While some sources indicate that the quatre-quarts originated in Brittany, a region in the north-west of France, others swear the pound cake is a British invention dating back to the early 1700s. Here's a book written "By a lady": 

A recipe for pound cake can be traced back to the book Art of Cookery published in 1747. The "lady" turned out to be Hannah Glasse, confirmed as the author by historian Madeline Hope Dodds in 1938 - 191 years later! Until then, botanist John Hill had taken credit for writing the book. We've come a long way, haven't we... And speaking of coming a long way, was I glad to have my electric mixer for this job. Yes, I cheated. And so will you. Glasse's recipe instructs us to hand beat the batter for one hour!  (see entry below) Considering the lack of any leavening agent, this was to ensure enough air was introduced into the batter. Thank you, KitchenAid!

 (Notice the long s that looks like an f in "...wooden fpoon...")

According to another source, Linda Stradley’s Web site “What's Cooking America”, the first cookbook written by an American and published in the US is the 1796 cookbook American Cookery: or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Puff-pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and all kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to plain Cake by Amelia Simmons, an American orphan which included two recipes for pound cake. The book was printed by Hudson and Goodwin "For the author" which suggests that Simmons paid for the printing herself. 

While back in France, the 1893 edition of the Larousse dictionary refers to the quatre-quarts as a “gâteau domestique”. The suggestion is that the cake was made and consumed by the less educated. In the days when so many people could not read, the convention of using equal parts would have made recipes much easy to remember. I suppose that’s also the logic behind a relative of the pound cake – the 1234 cake – and naming cakes for their measurements: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs. Another relative of the pound cake is the cupcake. Two theories appear to exist behind the origin of the cupcake; the name refers to the amount of ingredients used (a cup of…); or that the cake was baked in a cup. It would seem that small pound cakes baked in individual-portion pans were quite popular in the 18^th century, including “Queen Cakes”. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution in the early 1900s that artificial leaveners, baking powder/soda, were used to achieve a lighter cake.

According to my culinary instructor, the “quatre-quart” was a staple during wartime, since it contained butter and sugar and hence provided soldiers with the much-needed energy to battle on. The men would divide their pieces and wrap them in individual portions to nibble on as they travelled. Of course, I thought. That makes sense. The fat in the butter, the energy of the sugar, the protein of the eggs. So I went online and looked for something to validate this claim. Now, which war was he talking about? WWI? WWII? The Vietnam War? The Seven Years War maybe? And as I scanned pages and pages of links, I began getting a little overwhelmed with recipes and under whelmed with facts. I did come across several American Civil War pound cake recipes but nothing to validate my instructor’s claim. In fact, it would appear that the pound cake literally disappeared during WWII because butter and sugar were being rationed.

This Canadian ad for Magic Baking Powder from 1944 featured a recipe for pound cake that replaced the rationed sugar with honey, claiming it sought to “...protect your precious ingredients...”

I love vintage ads. Oh, and here's another interesting tidbit I came across. Did you know Van Halen recorded a song called Poundcake in 1991? The Web has a number of interesting discussions as to the song’s meaning. Baking wasn't one of them. But once again, I digress.

I did come across some fascinating Web sites that linked pound cakes to US army rations. What the army once referred to as C-Rations, individually prepared wet rations, was replaced in 1958 with the MCI – Meal, Combat, Individual ration. The latter included pound cake, a favourite part of the MCI, according to one site.  It was available in the D-2 (Cake) unit, along with fruitcake and cinnamon-nut roll. D stood for “dessert”. 

In spite of the fact that the traditional pound cake has but four ingredients, a gazillion recipes and variations can be found on the Web. These are normally baked in loaf or bundt pans, but I did come across round layer varieties as well. Several types of frostings have also been developed for added taste. And as mentioned on several sites, and to which I can attest, the “quatre-quarts” tastes even better the next day.

While modern recipes have added baking powder and vanilla or other essences, I chose to recreate the original recipe: I used four eggs, which weighed in at 198 g. Hence, my recipe included 198 g of sugar, 198 g of flour, and 198 of butter.

I creamed the sugar and eggs together in a stainless steel bowl until light and fluffy, added the butter (softened in the microwave), and folded in the flour. I then poured the batter into a greased loaf pan and baked it in preheated oven at 180 C (350 F) for one hour. 

Because I chose a longer loaf pan, my cake didn't rise as much but in no way did it affect the appearance or taste. Here it is in all its buttery goodness!

I'm acutally surprised at how tasty it is, even though it has no salt or vanilla!

The waffle-textured pan used in this recipe is a Bake-Rite Tinware, 210.

If anyone knows what the number means, let me know. 

So pound for pound, a cake, by any other name, is still a cake. And after 300 years, this recipe has survived the test of time. It really does take the cake (ba-dum-bum!)

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to have my cholesterol levels checked. For you know what they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a... pound of cure. 

Bon appétit!