Before Red Velvet, There Was Mahogany: America’s First Chocolate Cake

In an increasingly busy world — and Valentine’s Day season — where a single scroll can give you a bombastic array of gorgeously futuristic, pushing-the-envelope dessert photos, it’s reasonable to think that we’ve already seen just about everything when it comes to the world of cake.

And that’s why it’s worth looking back.

Because when you dig back in history and attempt to unearth some forgotten gems, you can land on the kind of cakes we need right now. Cakes that can be a part of personal moments, not a publicized event in and of themselves. And lately I’ve fallen in love with a cake that’s so demure on a platter and gentle in flavor, it feels like a balm. So old-fashioned and underrated, it somehow feels new. The recipe defining this radically simple way of cake thinking? Mahogany cake.

According to Anne Byrn’s book American Cake, Mahogany cake dates back to the late 1800s in America, and is the first “chocolate cake” on record, appearing in major cookbooks of the day such as Sarah Tyson Rorer’s The Philadelphia Cookbook, published in 1886. As it happens, Mahogany cake is also an awesome study in the subject of baking chemistry — and the alchemy of the ingredients creating not only a lofty rise, but also a phenomenal texture and a beautiful, unique reddish-brown color as well. In many ways, Mahogany cake was the gateway cake to the technicolor Red Velvet.

Let’s start by examining one of the most winning qualities of Mahogany cake: It’s got a fantastically soft and fine crumb, created by the unique combination of vinegar or buttermilk and baking soda. This combination of ingredients was a late Victorian-era technique for creating “velvet cakes,” in reference to their super-soft, velvety interiors — a grand departure from the heavier, denser cakes that had previously defined the era.

Towards the end of the 19th century in America, the concept of the velvet cake was given the addition of a few spoonfuls of natural cocoa powder or squares of unsweetened chocolate. In the early days of cocoa manufacturing, products weren’t alkalized, and therefore were quite acidic. When natural cocoa meets the combination of vinegar and soda, the bright-red pigments in cacao known as anthocyanin are released. So with this serendipitous marriage of ingredients, the velvet cake took on a reddish-brown hue along with a whisper of chocolate flavor — and the magic of Mahogany cake was born.

The original Mahogany cake was most often paired with a white ermine frosting, also known as “flour frosting,” “boiled milk frosting,” or (my personal favorite) “cloudburst frosting.” Whatever your grandmother or great-grandmother called it, it’s an impossibly light, whipped buttercream so named for its silky, luxurious quality, thanks to a pudding-like base made with flour, milk, and granulated sugar. Ermine was the American cake icing of choice before confectioners’ sugar became a widely available bakers’ staple, and a clever way to frost cakes while not blowing through expensive (and later rationed) ingredients like sugar and butter. It has the mouthfeel, not-too-sweet flavor, and gloriously swoop-able quality of a meringue-based buttercream with a fraction of the effort, making it truly deserving of its own prominent place in your cake recipe arsenal.

Throughout the early 1900s, Mahogany cake continued to rise, with lots of twists on the concept becoming popular as the century progressed and new baking ingredients were introduced and became more affordable. The earliest versions of red velvet cakes (and indeed, even some current recipes) are essentially Mahogany cake recipes with either beet juice or food coloring added. This also explains why the first versions of red velvet cakes don’t call for cream cheese frosting (which didn’t really trend until the 1960s), but rather the aforementioned ermine frosting that was classically paired with Mahogany cake.

When you take the red velvet cake back to its mahogany roots, and experience its subtle vintage flavors and velvety crumb — without the Red #40 — it’s every bit as delicious, if not more. And while by today’s standards chocolate cakes only register as such if they shout it from the rooftops, this lightly cocoa’d cloud and modest slick of creamy vanilla frosting is a welcomed respite. It’s a cake you can build a real conversation around, meaning the conversation can be about other things, in addition to the cake itself. How about that?

I’ll go ahead and say it. Mahogany cake is better than the shockingly scarlet red velvet cake you’ve been eating. This cake is subtly sweet with a mere suggestion of cocoa flavor and a crumb so tender no wonder its offspring is called velvet. As my first attempt at ermine frosting, and despite my unfamiliarity with the procedure, the icing was simple to make and easy to work with. It had a slight tang to the flavor, reminiscent of the more modern cream cheese frosting. I admit that almond extract is not my favorite flavor, so next time I make ermine frosting I’ll increase the vanilla extract rather than use a combination of extracts.

–Patty, February 2019