Arithmetic in the 40s and Feeding Little Ones

40s kids were taught arithmetic prior to the "new math" movement. New math was introduced in the 1960s as an attempt to keep American schoolchildren's math and science skills competitive with Russia.

So, how was arithmetic done back in the day? To me, it actually seems a little neater.

Take for example the problem: 723 - 186. The old way the math would be done as such:

  723
-186      

Instead of borrowing from the 2 to make the 3 into 13, one would subtract the 6 from 3 by counting six backward from three like such... 2,1,0,9,8,7. Making 7 the difference (answer). You would then "carry" the one (because you went past zero once) and add it to the 8 (or if you wanna get fancy you can take it away from the 2) in the next column.

To me it's neater, because you don't wind up with number soup all over the place when writing it out on paper. I remember making simple errors in grade school after losing track of all the carrying and borrowing that was scribbled all over the teeny tiny margins between the numbers on my homework assignments. Just look at this crazy mess...

Ones, Ones everywhere!!!

To me, this looks so much less confusing...

No slashes, just a couple of ones. Ahhhh - nice.

I'm sure there are advantages to the "new" way that I'm just not seeing, but aesthetics is clearly not one of them.

Tom Lehrer explains the differences humorously and thoroughly in his hit song New Math.

I could listen to this song over and again and still get a giggle, but alas, it is time to move on to our recipe...

What does math have to do with our recipe? My son invited some friends over to be test subjects in his science fair project. He needed them to take a math test under varying conditions so that he could test the condition's effects on cognition. Pretty cool, right? Asking people to come over and take a math test isn't easy though, so I plied them with cake.

The cake is called a "One-Two-Three-Four Cake"... sounds appropriate enough. The ingredients are super simple, but the steps are surprisingly particular (just like math).

To make the cake cream 1 cup butter with 2 cups sugar until fluffy. Add 4 egg yolks one at a time (hang on to the whites). Beat the mixture thoroughly after adding each egg. Sift 3 cups cake flour with 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 3 teaspoons baking powder three times. That's right THREE FREAKIN' TIMES. Because sifters are so cooperative this won't be frustrating at all. (Note to self: look into buying some sort of fancy sifter). Add half the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture with 1/2 cup milk and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add the remaining dry ingredients and a 1/2 cup more milk. Beat until smooth again. Beat the egg whites until stiff (whoops! I don't remember reading this when I was making the cake). Fold the egg whites into the batter. Pour into three 9" pans and bake at 350* for ~ 25 minutes.

I don't have three 9" pans, so I used a bundt pan.

Yup, looks like cake batter

After about 30 minutes the cake smelled done, but the batter looked wet, so I gave it another 5. After five more minutes I started to smell burning. (oh boy!).

Phew! This looks okay

Removing cakes from pans has never been my strong suit. I always line my pans with wax paper, but that solution is a no-go for the bundt pan. After shaking the thing like a maraca for a few minutes, the cake was finally free.

Well.. most of it was free anyway

I frosted the cake with whipped cream. That recipe wasn't from the book, but it's my stand-by. Just a little bit of heavy cream mixed with your desired amount of powdered sugar, whipped into a frostable consistency.

Frosting to the rescue!

I'm not sure the kids liked it much, but my fiance and I both enjoyed it. It struck us both as a sort of casual company cake and not a special occasion cake. It was a little crunchy on the outside, airy on the inside, and not too sweet. It would make the perfect compliment to coffee with friends.

This one will definitely stay a regular in my everyday rotation.