NEW YORK — Pound cake is so called because it is traditionally made with a pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Take, for instance, this mid-18th-century recipe:
“Take a Pound of Butter, beat it in an earthen Pan, with your Hand one Way, till it is like a fine thick Cream; then have ready twelve Eggs, but half the Whites, beat them well, and beat them up with the Butter, a Pound of Flour beat in it, and a Pound of Sugar, and a few Carraways; beat it all well together for an Hour with your Hand, or a great wooden Spoon. Butter a Pan, and put it in and bake it an Hour in a quick Oven. For Change, you may put in a Pound of Currants cleaned wash’d and pick’d”
You will notice that this recipe does not call for any Saleratus or Horsford’s Bread Preparation, and that is because baking soda and baking powder (as they’re known today) weren’t commercially available until the mid-19th century. Before that, pound cake was unleavened and consequently leaden. The development of chemical leaveners was a godsend for many baked goods, but perhaps none so much as pound cake. A pound cake without baking powder is heavier than the loudest, most ominous Black Sabbath track.
Other modern pound cake developments have been less auspicious. These days, “pound cake” recipes often boast yogurt, buttermilk, sour cream and even plain old milk in their ingredients lists. Judging from these recipes, you’d think any regular cake magically becomes a pound cake just by being baked in a loaf pan. This isn’t the case. Yogurt cake is good, for sure, but adding yogurt dilutes the dense, buttery richness of real pound cake. Let’s all agree that pound cake should have no liquid in it besides butter, eggs, and perhaps some vanilla or almond extract (or, as a trusted colleague emphatically advises, rum).