Andrea Sparks, age 13, of Colorado Springs, Colo., for her question:

WHAT IS A POUND CAKE?

The pound cake is a very old fashioned, traditional cake. It received its name because of its unusual recipe: Mix together one pound of butter, one pound of sugar, one pound of flour and one pound of eggs    which come out to about eight or 10 eggs. Modern chefs have updated the recipe to now include milk and a bit of baking power and salt. Some chefs today also add a little vanilla hand a spice called mace.

Did you know there were three kinds of pounds? There's the avoirdupois pound which has 16 ounces and the troy and apothecaries' pounds which have 12 ounces each. The troy pound is used for weighing precious metals while druggists sometimes use the apothecaries' pound.

The avoirdupois pound is used for measuring such merchandise as meat, cheese and butter. And pound cake, too.