Pound patty , a spongy confection often baked in a loaf or bundt pan , isbelovedin the South . It can be flavored with cream cheeseflower , lemon yellow , and sour cream , making for a lemonlike , not - too - sweet choice to classic baked good likecookiesor cupcake .
But unlike with many othercakes(think cocoa , vanilla , and cultivated carrot ) , it ’s not now clear-cut what apoundcake tastes like from its name alone . You may assume that the cake get its name because it weighs a Cypriot pound . If you look at the history of the sweet , however , you ’ll see that ’s not in reality the pillowcase .
Pound cakesoriginatedin England in the 1700s . They were called that because the very first pound cakes were monumental ; they used one pound each of eggs , flour , gelt , and butter , and would ’ve been capable to tip multiple family . Leaveners ( likebaking sodium carbonate , broil pulverization , yeast , or cream of cream of tartar ) were not used . Instead , air was whipped into the slugger .
The recipe ’s chasteness waskeyto its popularity . At the time , much of the population could n’t read or pen , so most information was spread by word of mouth . The 1:1:1:1 formula for lb bar ingredients was easy to call up , and scaling it up or down was bare . Instead of having to do mental math for each element , bread maker only had to do it once ; halving the recipe , for example , would require half a pound each of eggs , flour , sugar , and butter . All four of those ingredients were moderately cheap , make it a great staple for the average family .
Pound bar rapidly spread to the American colony , and in 1796 , it appeared in Amelia Simmons’sAmerican Cooking — thefirstcookbook published by an American . It seems that by the 1800s , the cake was already pop in the South . Mary Randolfpublished a classic version in her 1824 cookbook , The Virginia Housewife . For 1881’sWhat Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking , Abby Fisher adapted the patty to include barm and worst egg whites .
today , pound bar is an iconic component of the southerly board . It ’s also rarely made with four pound of ingredients today — which is good tidings if you do n’t have a whole village to feed .
