Queen cakes, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, were little cakes usually baked in fancy molds. I was drawn to this particular recipe, from Eliza Leslie’s 1828 book Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, because it seemed especially fancy. Although queen cakes could be made any time of year, Leslie suggests decorating these with red and green nonpareils, which made me think they would be perfect for Christmas.
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I rediscovered this recipe from my great-great-grandmother thanks to a bit of internet serendipity.
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Madeleines are tiny Genoese sponge cakes that get their distinctive shape from special shell-shaped baking molds. While the exact origin of the name “madeleine” is uncertain, it is known that the little cakes most likely originated in France sometime in the 18th century.
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After playing a game of tennis in a corset and heavy skirts, who wouldn’t want to eat cake?
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Lamington cakes, an Australian favorite, are named after either Lord Lamington, governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901, or his wife, Lady Lamington. Lamingtons are beloved enough that they are celebrated by an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society and have an official holiday, National Lamington Day, on July 21st.
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This 1930’s coffee cake combines all the things I’ve loved about the other coffee cakes I’ve tried: it’s made with coffee and it’s good to eat with coffee!
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This coffee cake recipe comes from Sunkist Orange Recipes for Year-Round Freshness, a 1940 advertising pamphlet for Sunkist oranges. Every single recipe in the booklet contains oranges in some shape or form – and every page contains eye-popping bright orange illustrations.
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The term “coffee cake” started appearing in print during the 19th century, but it didn’t always refer to the type of coffee cake we would recognize today. Early coffee cake recipes could be for any type of bread, pastry, or cake that could be consumed with coffee…or, like in this recipe from 1877, they might actually be made with coffee.
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I was intrigued by the title of Amelie Langdon’s 1903 cookbook, Just for Two: A Collection of Recipes Designed for Two Persons. Many historic recipes I come across seem to be portioned for an army of twenty, forcing me either to reduce the amounts or to eat leftovers for days. It’s refreshing to see recipes sized for only two people.
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This recipe originally comes from Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook, or, the Art and Mystery of Cookery, published in 1660. I used a modernized version from A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain, which reduces the size of the original from a twenty-pound monstrosity to a cake capable of being baked in a 9-inch tin.
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History in the Making 