Cake: Chiffon Cake

In the 1920s, a Los Angeles insurance salesman named Harry Baker invented a brilliant new cake while moonlighting as a caterer to the Hollywood stars. In its imposing height and ethereal texture, Baker’s cake resembled angel food cake, one of the most popular cakes of the day, but it had a richness lacking in angel food cake and, perhaps more importantly, it was much easier to make successfully. The cake’s richness was accounted for by cooking oil, an unheard-of ingredient in cakes at the time, and a very clever one, for, unlike solid fats (butter or shortening), it did not undercut the springy, spongy quality that made angel food cake so appealing. The cake’s friendliness to home bakers, meanwhile, was a matter of its novel construction. Essentially, Baker’s cake was simply a muffin—flour, sugar, water, oil, egg yolks, and baking powder mixed together—glorified into a towering, tender sponge tube cake by the folding in of stiffly beaten egg whites. Even if the egg whites were underbeaten or clumsily incorporated into the batter, the cake would still rise because, unlike angel food cake, Baker’s cake was powered by baking powder.