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This cake comes from the 1905 printing of Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, where it sits in an appendix of newly added recipes. Devil’s food was only just getting its name in print at the time. The recipe also shows how a Boston kitchen worked then: level cup measures, one-ounce squares of Baker’s chocolate, baking powder instead of soda, and a coal range with no thermometer.
Please note that some of the images in this article were created with the assistance of AI.
From The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1905
About This Recipe
This devil’s food cake comes from the 1905 printing of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, a Boston cook who ran the Boston Cooking School and later opened her own Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery. Her book, first published in 1896, was the best-selling cookbook of its day and taught American cooks to use level cup and spoon measures. The recipe appears in an appendix of newly added recipes, just a few years after the name ‘devil’s food’ first reached print, possibly as a dark, rich counterpart to the popular angel food cake. Fittingly, Farmer has you bake it in an angel cake pan and cover it with a white boiled frosting called White Mountain Cream. With only two ounces of chocolate, it was probably milder and lighter in color than the devil’s food most of us know today.
Fannie Merritt Farmer · page 587
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The Page, as Printed in 1905
Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1905), p. 587. Transcribed from the original scan.
The recipe · 1905
Devil’s Food Cake
From The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer (1905), page 587. Every word below is as printed.
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter.
- 2 cups sugar.
- Yolks 4 eggs.
- 1 cup milk.
- 2⅓ cups flour.
- 4 teaspoons baking powder.
- Whites 4 eggs.
- 2 squares chocolate.
- ½ teaspoon vanilla.
Method
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Cream the butter with half the sugar
Cream the butter, and add gradually one-half the sugar.
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Beat the yolks with the rest of the sugar
Beat yolks of eggs until thick and lemon-colored, and add gradually remaining sugar.
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Combine and finish the batter
Combine mixtures, and add alternately milk and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder; then add whites of eggs beaten stiff, chocolate melted, and vanilla.
-
Bake the cake
Bake forty-five to fifty minutes in an angel cake pan.
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Frost the cake
Cover with White Mountain Cream (see p. 437).
Source: Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1905), p. 587. View the original page (Internet Archive, scan from The Library of Congress).
The original recipe text and page scan are from a work published in 1905 and are in the public domain in the United States. The history and notes are Piaci Pizza’s own writing. Brand names that appear in historic recipes are mentioned as historical fact only. Illustrations are AI-generated in a vintage style. The recipe is shown exactly as it was published in 1905; we have not photographed a test batch.
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