exchemist
Valued Senior Member
I have recently starting baking Victoria sandwich sponge cake. The cake is named after Queen Victoria, who was partial to the original version (as replicated by me in the picture below), in which the sponge is flavoured with vanilla and a simple raspberry jam filling is used:
![upload_2020-8-25_15-23-20.jpeg upload_2020-8-25_15-23-20.jpeg](https://www.sciforums.com/data/attachments/3/3620-eebca9df972fe3c83f0a42bd5093012f.jpg)
It turns out this cake was the revolutionary result of a new cooking ingredient, invented in the 1840s by a chemist by the name of Alfred Bird. This was baking powder, a mixture of sodium bicarbonate (sodium hydrogen carbonate, NaHCO3) and tartaric acid (HOOC.CHOH.CHOH.COOH). When heated in the presence of moisture there is a neutralisation reaction, evolving CO2, which causes the cake mixture to rise. The small amount of reaction product, sodium tartrate, is tasteless and quite safe to eat (the white crystals found as deposits in aged white wine are tartrates - they are harmless). Before this time, the only way to get cakes to rise was the use of beaten egg white (as in soufflés) or yeast, as in bread making.
Bird also invented a kind of egg-free custard, which proved so easy to make (compared to the real thing, which is a huge bore to prepare) and thus popular that he founded a business to make it. The brand survives to this day and a packet of Bird's custard powder was at the back of every housewife's cupboard in Britain for about a century. I used to get it at home and at school: not very exciting, but inoffensive, yellow stuff you glooped onto various puddings. Perhaps some other readers in the Anglophone world will have come across it.
Both inventions were apparently spurred by his wife's allergies: she was allergic to both yeast and eggs!
Baking powder has proved a godsend in the kitchen, ever since. In the UK, you can buy 2 sorts of flour, plain and "self-raising". The latter includes some pre-mixed baking powder. Of course you can also buy baking powder separately - and in fact I used self-raising flour boosted with an extra level teaspoon of baking powder to bake the cake in the photograph.
By the way, the Victoria sponge uses equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour: in the picture, 4 eggs and 250g each of the other 3 ingredients were used. The butter can be softened by leaving it in the boiler cupboard for a bit - when the boiler is not active: you don't want to melt it!
(Hot tip: use seeds from half a vanilla pod, not vanilla essence. It is far more fragrant.)
![upload_2020-8-25_15-23-20.jpeg upload_2020-8-25_15-23-20.jpeg](https://www.sciforums.com/data/attachments/3/3620-eebca9df972fe3c83f0a42bd5093012f.jpg)
It turns out this cake was the revolutionary result of a new cooking ingredient, invented in the 1840s by a chemist by the name of Alfred Bird. This was baking powder, a mixture of sodium bicarbonate (sodium hydrogen carbonate, NaHCO3) and tartaric acid (HOOC.CHOH.CHOH.COOH). When heated in the presence of moisture there is a neutralisation reaction, evolving CO2, which causes the cake mixture to rise. The small amount of reaction product, sodium tartrate, is tasteless and quite safe to eat (the white crystals found as deposits in aged white wine are tartrates - they are harmless). Before this time, the only way to get cakes to rise was the use of beaten egg white (as in soufflés) or yeast, as in bread making.
Bird also invented a kind of egg-free custard, which proved so easy to make (compared to the real thing, which is a huge bore to prepare) and thus popular that he founded a business to make it. The brand survives to this day and a packet of Bird's custard powder was at the back of every housewife's cupboard in Britain for about a century. I used to get it at home and at school: not very exciting, but inoffensive, yellow stuff you glooped onto various puddings. Perhaps some other readers in the Anglophone world will have come across it.
Both inventions were apparently spurred by his wife's allergies: she was allergic to both yeast and eggs!
Baking powder has proved a godsend in the kitchen, ever since. In the UK, you can buy 2 sorts of flour, plain and "self-raising". The latter includes some pre-mixed baking powder. Of course you can also buy baking powder separately - and in fact I used self-raising flour boosted with an extra level teaspoon of baking powder to bake the cake in the photograph.
By the way, the Victoria sponge uses equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour: in the picture, 4 eggs and 250g each of the other 3 ingredients were used. The butter can be softened by leaving it in the boiler cupboard for a bit - when the boiler is not active: you don't want to melt it!
(Hot tip: use seeds from half a vanilla pod, not vanilla essence. It is far more fragrant.)