Angel food cake cools upside down so its fragile bubbles survive
Angel food cake contains no yolks, no butter and no baking powder, only whipped egg whites, sugar and a little flour. Its entire lift comes from trapped air, which is why bakers invert the pan after it leaves the oven and leave the cake hanging, sometimes for hours, until its structure has set.
A basic recipe combines egg whites, sugar and flour at roughly 3 to 3 to 1 by weight, plus salt, vanilla and cream of tartar. That last ingredient steadies the foam, softens the crumb, whitens the interior and limits shrinkage. The dangerous moment is folding in the flour: overwork the batter and the air collapses, which is why the cake has a reputation for being tricky. Even a trace of oil on a bowl, or a flavouring built on essential oils, can deflate it. The tube pan goes in ungreased so the batter can cling to the sides as it climbs.
Its roots are American. Europe had sponge cakes from the 1600s, but Lettice Bryan's 1839 Kentucky Housewife offered a yolkless White Sponge, and an 1864 cookbook pared the formula down to sugar, flour and egg whites. The rotary egg beater, invented around 1870, made all that whisking far easier. The name angels' food first appears for the cake in an 1878 Detroit cookbook, and Mary Lincoln's Boston Cook Book of 1884 made it widely popular. Folklore credits thrifty Pennsylvania Dutch cooks using whites left over from noodle making.
In the 1930s researchers found that whipping in less air gave a moister, more tender result, and recipes began folding half the sugar in with the flour. Flavoured versions followed, from maraschino cherry and prune to peppermint and butterscotch. The daffodil cake, streaked with yellow, gave Depression cooks a use for spare yolks. By 1962 so much lab work had been done that illustrator Marion Becker complained it might intimidate home cooks.
The cake carries meanings beyond dessert. Among African Americans it often appears at funeral receptions, suggesting the departed now lives among angels, while Pennsylvania Dutch couples have served it as a wedding cake. Its low fat content later gave it a healthy image, and by the early 2000s that reputation had brought it back into favour.
Source: Angel food cake
