Appropriate Cakes

It has been a long time since I posted about any of the people who contributed recipes to a Brooklyn parish cookbook that I was lucky enough to pick up secondhand in Toronto. This book had its original binding but that binding bears no title, no author, no marks of any kind (except grime!). I was able to deduce that it was a Parish Aid cookbook from the epigraph, which was a poem written (as it turns out) by one of the leading parish lights, Miss Anna Alt-Müller. You can read my post about Anna and her family here.

The ad on the last page tied the book to Brooklyn, and I was able to track down a very similar-sounding cookbook here (see entry #183), which attributed the book to St. John's Episcopal Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was able to pinpoint the Alt-Müllers house as being only a few blocks from that church, so am fairly certain of the provenance of my mystery cookbook.

In the middle of the book is a little jokey section written perhaps by Anna or one of the other Parish Aid ladies. It is just the sort of thing that the newspapers liked to put in as filler, around this time (the cookbook dates from about 1900-1910) - and almanacs, too.

APPROPRIATE CAKES

For Politicians - Election Cake
For a Geologist - Layer Cake
For an Advertiser - Puffs
For a Tailor - Measure Cake
For a Milliner - Ribbon Cake
For the Devout - Angel Cake
For a Jeweler - Gems
For the Irritable - Short Cake and Ginger Snaps
For a Lover - Lady Fingers
For the Betrothed - Wedding Cake and Kisses
For a Gossip - Spice Cake
For an Idler - Loaf Cake
For an Office Seeker - Washington Cake
For the man who lives on his father-in-law - Sponge Cake
For a Dude - Johnny Cake
For a Belle - Vanity Cake
For those who partake too freely of the above mentioned - Stomo-Cake

I was curious about the unfamiliar cakes - Measure Cake, Election Cake and especially Vanity Cake. Oddly enough none of these are actually in the St. John's cookbook, though of course the ladies knew about them.

So far a search of my pre-1920 cookbooks has not turned up much. But here is the Dictionary of American Food and Drink to the rescue - at least, with reference to Election Cake. It was a raised fruitcake, particularly associated with Hartford, Connecticut. It was so called because it was served by political parties on election day to those who voted for them. There were also election buns, of the same ilk. It was well known by the 1830s, and is first mentioned in print about 1800.

I definitely want to find a recipe for Vanity Cake. When I do, I'll share it. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, of a mysteriously captioned, yet cake-related, cigarette card.

Why is a plum cake like the ocean? Anyone? (The NYPL did not digitize the back of the card, which presumably has the correct answer on it).

Source:

Mariani, John. The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983), p. 157.