Let Them Eat Chocolate Cake
When you hear the words "chocolate cake," what comes to mind? Maybe a gooey three-layer chocolate cake with rich, dark fudgy frosting? What about red velvet cake? While it may be to your surprise, red velvet cake originated from chocolate cake and was made using chocolate. However, the history of how we got red velvet cake is complicated with often contradictory definitions. Recipes for “red velvet cake,” its precursor “devil's food cake,” and even a basic chocolate cakes vary throughout history and from baker to baker. This section describes the evolution red velvet cake as seen in the resources of the Special Collection and University Archives of Virginia Tech, but it should be noted that this is only a slice of the story of American chocolate cake history.
It All Started with Chocolate Cake
According to the Food Timeline (managed by Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives), the definition of "chocolate cake" wasn't always that three-layered chocolate-flavored cake with chocolate frosting that you just imagined. In its origin in the early 19th century, "chocolate cake" often referred to a yellow or white cake covered in chocolate frosting. Perhaps this was because chocolate was limited to what people could hand-mill themselves before Van Houten's invention of the cocoa press in 1828 and home bakers preferred to concentrate the small amount in a chocolate frosting as opposed to diluting the flavor in an entire cake. After industrially-produced powdered cocoa and solid baking chocolate made it to the local grocery store shelves, recipes for chocolate-flavored cake became more popular. The first recipes for chocolate cake seen in the SCUA resources include a 1902 pamphlet of award-winning chocolate recipes from across the United States titled "100 Recipes with Cream of Pure Chocolate." Many of these early chocolate cake recipes called for 4 or 5 eggs, which is significantly more than modern day chocolate cake recipes. The pamphlet also includes several recipes for a strange, and now defunct version of chocolate cake called "Cream of Chocolate Cake." These recipes also included an excessive number egg, but more surprisingly, included some acidic ingredients not seen in modern chocolate cakes, like lemon juice, sour milk, and cream of tartar. Furthermore, "Cream of Chocolate Cake" recipes used whipped egg whites as opposed to other common leaveners, like baking powder and baking soda.
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, chocolate cake recipes mostly resembled modern chocolate cake recipes. In a 1928 recipe pamphlet titled "Famous Recipes for Baker's Chocolate and Breakfast Cocoa," the Walter Baker company instructs for the use of melting solid baking chocolate to use to make chocolate cake. Before, as seen in the 1902 Robert's Company recipe pamphlet, cocoa powder was used to flavor the cake. However, melted baking chocolate contributed richer, more intense chocolate flavor preferred by home baker--chocolate recipes after the late 1920s generally used solid bakers’ chocolate to flavor the cake. Additionally, these recipes specified the use of Swan's Down cake flour, an innovation in flour characterized by having a finer grain and making a more delicate, softer cake than regular flour. In terms of eggs, chocolate cake recipes at the time also notably decrease the quantity of eggs used to two or sometimes one. These shifts like the use of solid baking chocolate from cocoa powder, cake flour from general-purpose flour, and two eggs from four or five reflected how chocolate cake recipes after the mid-1930s became nearly identical to modern chocolate cake recipes.
Lastly, the frosting used for chocolate cakes also shifted by the 1930s to reflect our modern ideal of chocolate cake. In most of the 1902 chocolate cake recipes, frosting is not mentioned at all. In the few recipes that did call for frosting, white "boiled" frosting was used. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, most chocolate cake recipes indicated the use of some variation of chocolate frosting, such as "boiled" or "quick" chocolate frostings. However, using white frostings for chocolate cake remained popular and even became a distinguishing characteristic of the precursor to red velvet cake. This appeal of red-tinted chocolate cake and white frosting swept through American and soon after came the invention of the luxurious red-velvet cake.
The Devil's Dilemma: What is Devil's Food Cake?
Devil's food cake was one of the earliest recipes originating from chocolate cake still enjoyed today. This cake, defined by its strikingly dark color and bold flavor, is seen in recipes as early as 1902. While the origin of its name is not exactly known, one theory is that the name came about to contrast it from the already-popular, pale white "angel food cake.” However, recipes for devil's food cake seem to be more than chocolate-flavored angel cake, which also existed as lighter, angel-food style cake that included chocolate. So, what is the difference?
The most notable difference, and reason for the darkened color of the cake, is a chemical reaction that occurs between acidic ingredients not normally found in chocolate cake, with a chemical in cocoa called anthocyanin. Like a litmus test, anthocyanin has a unique chemical structure that causes it to turn dark red-brown in acidic conditions. In the 1902 recipe titled "Roberts Devil Food" from "100 Recipes with Cream of Pure Chocolate," brown sugar and possibly "sweet milk" were used to increase the acidity, albeit not very much, and cause the darkening color change in the cake. Later on, in the 1920s and 1930s, "sour milk" (a precursor of buttermilk), lemon juice, and occasionally cream of tartar were utilized to significantly increase the acidity of the cake and dramatically darken the color, possibly giving it a reddish tint. Perhaps this is why, starting in the 1930s, recipes titled "Red" Devils food Cake began to become popular. One specific example found in "The Hershey Recipe Book" from 1930 describes how to make "Red Devils Food Cake." It uses a nearly identical recipe to that of normal devils food cake and only substitutes the brown sugar for white sugar, potentially to better bring out the reddish color. Whether the color of the "Red Devils Food Cake" was actually red or the same dark brown is unclear, however it does highlight the growing fascination of the American baker with red cake.
A final defining characteristic of Devil's food cake, "Red" or not, was the use of white icing that starkly contrasted the diabolically dark cake. The earliest Devils food cake recipe from the 1902 Robert's Company pamphlet instructs the use of egg whites, lemon, and super-fine sugar to make the perfect devils food cake frosting. Recipes from the late 1920s and early 1930s also use egg white frosting, but without lemon juice. One example is "Divinity frosting", a white, fluffy corn syrup-egg white frosting used in the Devil's food Cake recipe in the 1929 pamphlet from titled "Chocolate Cookery."
American Bakers Seeing Red... Velvet
It is suprising that one of today's most iconic cakes, the brilliant red velvet cake, didn't become popular in America until recently. While it is believed to have originated as early as the 1920s, most recipe books don't include red velvet cakes until the early 2000s. So how did the red velvet cake come to be, and did it come from the similarly-named "red devils food cake"?
According to the author of a 2010 cake cookbook titled "United Cakes of America" detailing the evolution of popular traditional American cakes, red velvet cake either originated as a Southerns delicacy in the early 1900s or in New York in the 1920s. The theory of red velvet's Southern origin is corroborated by presence of a recipe for "Red Valentine Cake" found in a 1983 Southern Hertiage cookbook which is identical to modern-day red velvet cake recipe. The 2010 cookbook also details the story about a New Yorker who was asked to pay one hundred dollars to get the recipe from the cooks of a renowned hotel, deeming the nickname the "hundred dollar cake." Additionally, recipes for red velvet cake were found in Austin, Texas as a marketing scheme for red food coloring. When the new company Adam's Extract released its first food dye, being the red food dye, in the 1920s, it advertised with recipe cards for red-velvet cake. All this being said, whatever the origin, red-velvet cake seemed to have been invented by 1920s possibly from one or many creators.
While the origin of red velvet cake is confusing and convoluted, the ingredients that define a red velvet cake are not. And despite origin stories not mentioning a connection to Devil's food cake, these recipes are strikingly similar. As seen in our resources featuirng red velvet recipes starting in the early 1980s, all red velvet cakes use buttermilk or sour milk (which can be made by combining milk and vinegar) to provide the tangy taste and acidic reaction with the cocoa, and red food dye to amplify the characteristic crimson color. Occationally, recipes also utilize a small amount of vinegar, however this is seen more often in newer recipes. Furthermore, they are usually topped with a white frosting. According to the 2010 reference, white buttercream frostings are traditional and are seen in most of our resources discussing red velvet cake frostings. Today, interestingly, cream cheese frosting is a more popular pairing than buttercream despite not having an histiorical foundation. Whatever the exact type, white frosting is a hallmark of red velvet cake that connects it to earlier recipes for red devils food cake, which also utilized white frosting to contrast the dark red cake.
In addition to red velvet cakes, the rare recipe for “white velvet” and “chocolate velvet” cakes are found in historical cookbooks from the later half of the 20th century. However, often these recipes don’t have the characteristic acidic ingredients like buttermilk, and therefore their name may be indicative of their “velvety-texture” rather than association to a true red velvet cake.
Fun Fact! A modern variation of red velvet cake is called "blue velvet cake" that substitutes traditional red dye for blue food dye. That being said, hypothetically it is possible to make a naturally blue-tinted cake using the properties of the previously mentioned anthycanins in cocoa, which turn reddish-brown in acidic conditions and blue-purple in basic conditions. However, most edible ingredient as not very basic with foods like onions and spinach being the most basic (pH 10). To get good coloration, extremely basic (and inedible) household products like bleach are preferred, however this could be potentially hazardous if you or loved one see blue velvet cake on the counter and get hungry.