Hickory Nut or Walnut Cake (1887)

This holiday nut cake from The White House Cook Book is really a spice cake in disguise! Featuring an entire “tablespoonful” of mace, it has a wonderfully old-fashioned flavor that spice cake aficionados will love.

Dear friends ~

We’ve been working our way through recipes in the two suggested Thanksgiving Menus I shared recently, from cook books published in 1845 and 1887. (You can find those menus here if you missed them.)

As I type, there’s a turkey roasting in the oven according 1800’s instructions, stuffed with an authentic oyster dressing I opted for, after a special request from a reader (shout out to Dale, whose mother used to make oyster dressing!)

You’ll hear all about those in Wednesday’s email. For today, let’s talk about that cake from the 1887 White House Cook Book menu.

In the menu, it suggests serving a “Hickory Nut Cake,” from a recipe that’s said to be on page 271. If you look up that recipe, you’ll see that there, it’s called “Hickory Nut or Walnut Cake”. There’s a picture of the recipe further down in this email. 

Now, I was pretty determined to make this with hickory nuts. I used to live on an Island where old Hickory and Heart-Nut trees could be found at the sites of old homesteads, and so I’ve always thought of them as fairly common nuts. 

Turns out, where I am now in Maine, it can be a little harder to get good hickory nuts, especially at a price one can afford. SO, in the interest of getting this recipe made and sharing it with you in time for the holiday, I gave up the search (this time around) and made the cake with walnuts. 

It turned out absolutely lovely–definitely a recipe I’d put on the “make this again” list. 

That said, if (like me), you’re going into this with the idea of making a mild, nutty-tasting cake, please know that this is actually a SPICE cake in disguise….and a spicy one at that. We are talking a full tablespoon of mace here.

If spice isn’t your favorite, it’s definitely worth adjusting either your expectations or, *gasp*, the recipe, as you’re making this. If you need permission to alter this to your family’s taste, just know that these old cookbooks are full of little penciled corrections and notations…mothers have been tweaking recipes to better suit their families since long before any of these volumes were printed. (This clove cake is a perfect example!)

What makes this cake special, in my opinion, isn’t just the up-front flavor of the mace (a spice that’s sadly gone out style, but deserves a comeback). It’s the way those nuts and raisins show up in layers in the finished cake, rather than just scattered throughout. It makes for a cake that feels sophisticated, and slightly fussy, in the best possible way. It won me over, and I’d definitely suggest giving this one a go…especially for any of you spice cake lovers. Hope you enjoy!

~ Anna

HICKORY NUT OR WALNUT CAKE

Two cups of fine, white sugar, creamed with half a cup of butter, three eggs, two-thirds of a cup of sweet milk, three cups of sifted flour, one heaping teaspoonful of baking powder sifted through the flour. A tablespoonful (level) of powdered mace, a coffee-cup of hickory nut or walnut meat, chopped a little. Fill the cake-pans with a layer of the cake, then a layer of raisins upon that, then strew over these a handful of nuts, and so on, until the pan is two-thirds full. Line the tins with well-buttered paper, and bake in a steady but not quick oven. This is most excellent.

The White House Cook Book, 1887

Here’s a photo of the recipe as it appears in the cookbook:

A FEW COOKING NOTES: 

Compared to many recipes of the era, this one is quite detailed. For example, it specifies exactly how much flour to put in, rather than leaving it to the baker’s intuition. It also clarifies that the milk is to be sweet (as opposed to sour milk, which was often used in baking). 

This was a pretty easy recipe to follow, but as usual, I do have a few notes that may be helpful if you decide to make this.

What kind of pan to use?

Square, round, and loaf pans were all quite common to use for a cake like this. The recipe calls for lining the cake pans with buttered paper, so I feel it’s unlikely that a slope-sided pan with a center hole (another common shape of the era) would have been used for this particular cake. 

Not having a larger round pan (yes, that’s embarrassing…I need to work on my cake pan collection!) I decided to make this recipe in two 6″ round cake pans. I actually loved how they came out, and once frosted, they were very cute and festive.

Sweet milk

Last time I shared a cake recipe that called for sweet milk, I received an excellent question by email from a reader. She was wondering if this meant sweetened condensed milk. 

It actually just means good fresh milk that still smells “sweet”, as opposed to sour milk. Because sour milk was often used in baking (the increased acidity helped with the leavening), it wasn’t always taken for granted the milk to be used in a cake recipe was supposed to be fresh. 

In this case, it is. Go ahead and use whatever nice, fresh milk you have in the fridge.

That tablespoonful of mace

If this feels like a lot, it kind of is. One might even question whether the tablespoon sizes are actually equivalent to our modern measuring spoons. 

For this volume, The White House Cook Book, that tablespoonful is a true tablespoon, just like you have in your measuring spoon set. The measurement is correct. 

That said, it does make for a spicy cake. Not the most spicy 1800’s cake I’ve ever made, but it does make for a “love it or leave it” sort of result. Spice cake lovers will likely adore it, others may not make it through a whole slice. Personally, I loved it with the full tablespoon, and wouldn’t change a thing, but please know I wouldn’t judge, if you decided to cut that amount in half. 

If you don’t have mace in your spice drawer, you should. You can almost always still find it at any well-stocked grocery store, and if you enjoy 1800’s cooking, you’ll use it again. I promise.

Those layers of raisins and nuts

You’ll notice that there’s no amount given for the volume of raisins to use. Personally, I took about ¼ cup for each layer and evenly scattered them. I ended up using about ¾ cup of raisins total. 

For the nuts, it seemed to me that the directions meant for the first cup of nuts that we’d “chopped a little”, to get mixed right into the batter. So I did that, and then used an additional ¼ cup of nuts (also chopped a little), for each layer of raisins and nuts. This brought the total amount of nuts used to about 1 and ¾ cups. 

The directions do seem a tad ambiguous, but I think if I hadn’t mixed the cupful of nuts into the batter, and instead used those for the raisins and nuts layers, this really wouldn’t have ended up seeming like a “nut cake”. 

Having tasted the finished cake, I would definitely say that using the extra nuts in addition to the cupful seems like what was intended here.

That buttered paper

​What a misery. Greasing paper to line cake pans is not a baking task I enjoy, but it does make for absolutely perfect finished cakes. 

For a holiday cake, it’s worth it. 

They would have literally used well-buttered “note paper”. My cheap printer paper is more absorbent than the popular note paper of that era would have been, so I allowed myself to use parchment paper, which I still greased well with butter.

Oven Temperature

​“A steady but not quick oven”. 

I ended up settling on 340 F as a temperature that felt accurate to this description, and liked how my 6″ cakes baked at that temperature. I’d definitely suggest it.

How long to bake this?

In 6″ round pans, at 340°F, these cakes took 1 hour and 5 minutes to bake perfectly. The top and edges were golden brown, and the centers well set. 

If you use a differently shaped pan, your cake may take a bit more or less time than mine. Check for golden edges and a center that’s fully set. The correct 1800’s way to check for doneness is by inserting a broom straw into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is done, if bits of batter adhere to it, the cake needs a little more time. Feel free to use a toothpick, if you don’t keep clean broom straws handy!

What about icing?

Here’s the recipe I used from this cook book. When in doubt, if you’re making a spice, nut, or fruit cake, from an 1800’s cook book, going with whatever basic “egg white and sugar” icing recipe appears in the cook book is likely to be an appropriate choice.

This icing is a lot like the “royal icing” that’s used for permanently cementing the architecture of gingerbread houses. Once it dries like it’s supposed to, it’s hard.

The perk of this is that as long as the cake stays un-cut, it remains tender, moist, and basically perfect inside…for days, if not longer. You could make a cake like well in advance, before when you needed to serve it. 

I found myself leaving behind bits of frosting, while enjoying the cake, because golly, that’s a crunchy, hard layer of sugar. It’s very authentic to the era though, and certainly worth serving (and eating!)a cake this way at least once I think.

---

My kids didn’t enjoy this cake as much as they did the clove cake or coffee cake that I’ve made recently. It was a hit with the grownups though, and definitely one I’d made again. 

Next up on our whirlwind roundup of 1800’s Thanksgiving recipes, we’ll be talking (roast) turkey, and oyster dressing!

Until next time, ~ Anna

This post was originally published in the 1800’s Housewife newsletter. Not on the mailing list? You can join here to receive full recipes with cooking notes straight to your inbox!

If you liked this recipe, here are some others you may enjoy: