The Famous Berwick (Maine) Sponge Cake – and Why it Disappeared

Today's blog is about a once famous locally created pastry in the 1800s that seems to have disappeared and was once enjoyed by Charles Dickens, himself! The Berwick (Maine) Sponge Cake was "light and lemony" and topped with raspberries. This story includes the ingredients! 

The Story of the Famous Berwick Sponge Cake – and Why it Disappeared 

The light and lemony confection was a favorite among train travelers  

When people traveled by rail in Maine from the 1850s until 1879, there was a delicacy that you simply had to have if you could get it: the famous Berwick sponge cake. When the Boston & Maine stopped in North Berwick, Maine, travelers got off and headed for a tiny restaurant nearby. There they would buy the light and lemony confection.

Charles Dickens, during his 1868 tour of America, made his acquaintance with the Berwick famous sponge cake on his way from Portland to Boston. Eleven-year-old Kate Smith (later Kate Douglas Wiggin) happened to travel on the same train as the writer she revered. When the train stopped in North Berwick, she looked out the window and saw Charles Dickens standing on the platform. Years later, she remembered, His hands were plunged deep in his pockets (a favorite gesture), but presently one was removed to wave away laughingly a piece of the famous Berwick sponge cake, offered him by Mr. Osgood, of Boston, his travelling companion and friend.

(Photo: Train station in North Berwick, Maine) 

Origin of the Famous Berwick Sponge Cake 

A 1901 story in Domestic Science Monthly recounts how in 1845 a Boston & Providence clerk named William C. Briggs said, “Build me a restaurant in North Berwick, and stop every train five minutes there.” So the railroad built a restaurant, and Mrs. Briggs made sponge cake according to a secret recipe. The cake became famous, and the Briggses shipped it all over the United States in boxes. 

Mrs. B. retired from the railway dining room business in 1879, having made a comfortable sum, mostly from cake sales. Mary Ann Briggs closed the restaurant, gave the recipe to her son-in-law and moved to Boston, where she died in 1898.

The Recipe

A reader from Rockland, Maine, wrote to the Domestic Science Monthly with the old Berwick sponge cake recipe:

Beat 6 eggs 2 min. Add 3 c. sugar and beat 2 min. 1 1/2 c. flour with 2 tsp. of cream of tartar; beat 1 min. Add 1 c. cold water with 1 tsp. of soda; add grated rind and juice of 1 lemon; beat 1 min. Add 1 1/2 c. flour and pinch of salt; beat one min. Bake 40 min. (oven temperature not recorded)  

A Worldwide Reputation 

Of the many cakes made in Massachusetts, none have a wider reputation and in their day larger sales than the Berwick sponge cake.