Baking for the Ballot

Suffrage Angel Cake…

The suffrage movement in the United States began in 1848 when women demanded the right to vote at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.  It took 72 years of lobbying, marching, picketing and protesting before women won this essential right.

What does this have to do with cooking? In the middle of the fight in the 1880s, women devised a brilliant marketing campaign to evangelize their crusade: Cookbooks. Throughout the United States and England, women’s auxiliary groups, civic organizations and religious institutions used cookbooks as a savvy advocacy tool. The revenue from the cookbooks also helped fund the cause.

In those days, anti-suffragists claimed that if women were granted the right to vote, they would neglect their household responsibilities. To counter this argument, suffragists published recipes to reassure men that their meals would be taken care of. For them, it was a minor sacrifice in the fight for their civil rights.
These cookbooks were compilations of recipes submitted by women devoted to the cause and published by suffrage organizations. Cookbooks were a resourceful and subtle way for women to convey their arguments, share information with other suffragists, and help fund the movement.

One of the most fascinating of these cookbooks came from Pittsburgh in 1915. “The Suffrage Cook Book” included recipes, celebrity endorsements, photographs and feisty jokes. The blue cover featured a silhouette of Uncle Sam piloting the ship of state with a wheel that has only 12.5 spokes. The 12 spokes were for those states where women could vote before the 19th Amendment – all Western states. The half-spoke was for Illinois, which, at the time, allowed women to vote only in school board elections.

Eliza Kennedy, a Pittsburgh-based advocate, wrote one of the recipes in this cookbook. Kennedy was not considered a national figure, but she was a dynamic fighter in Pennsylvania who gave speeches, planted suffrage gardens and served on the League of Women Voters committee.

She also made a darn good angel food cake! Here is Kennedy’s Suffrage Angel Food Cake recipe from “The Suffrage Cook Book” published in 1915. •

Suffrage Angel Cake

Servings: 2 | Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30-40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients

• 11 egg whites, room temperature
• 1 cup of all-purpose flour, sifted (minus 2 T)
• 2 T corn starch
• 1½ cups granulated sugar
• 1 heaping tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 pinch of salt

Directions

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sift the flour nine times. Then, sift the granulated sugar seven times. (Note: Modern cooks can opt to pulse the sugar in a food processor instead. The food processor method also makes the sugar less coarse, which helps ensure the proper structure of the cake.)Sift it one or two times afterward to get rid of any remaining lumps. Add the cornstarch.

Step 2: Whisk the egg whites in a bowl. When they’ve reached a frothy texture, gradually add in the cream of tartar, salt and sugar until the mixture is light with soft peaks. Then add the vanilla.

Step 3: Sift part of the flour into the egg whites, then fold the whites into the flour. Repeat until all the flour is blended.

Step 4: Pour the mixture into an ungreased angel food cake pan. Kennedy’s recipe calls for putting the cake into an oven “with very little heat,” and gradually increasing the heat every five minutes for 30 total minutes. Instead, you can just cook at 325 degrees for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Step 5: When it’s done, place a plate on your counter and rest the cake pan upside-down to cool (this position prevents the cake from deflating). Once it’s cool, run a knife around the pan’s edge and lightly hit the pan to guide the cake out. For extra flavor, garnish with berries and whipped cream.