Angel food cake, a downy-soft, stark white sponge cake made only with the whites of eggs, takes us back to a time when many Americans preferred sponge cakes over butter cakes and when women prized colorful cakes, particularly white ones. The immediate predecessor of angel food cake was white sponge cake, the earliest published recipe for which appeared in Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife, published in 1839. Bryan envisioned her white sponge cake for “a fine supper”—an extravagant late-hour buffet, often staged after a ball—and she “dressed” it accordingly, baking it as a large square, icing it “very white and smooth,” and festooning the edge with “very small gilded leaves” (which, Bryan added, were “a common decorament on such occasions with some of the most fashionable people in America”). For a truly spectacular presentation, Bryan suggested placing her cake on the supper table next to her yellow sponge cake, a deep-golden cake made only with the yolks of eggs and covered with “a thick coat” of orange-tinted icing. Serving “silver” and “gold” butter cakes together on party tables was already a favorite hostess conceit by the 1830s. Bryan extended this conceit into the sponge family, pleasing the many who, primarily for health reasons, avoided cakes made with butter.
