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Christmas Cake
Two eggs, one-half cupful of butter, one cupful of molasses, one cupful of raisins, two cupfuls of Mix and bake in a rather brisk oven. flour, and various spices.
A plain molasses fruit cake of the sort that stood in for expensive fruitcake in ordinary households. The text as printed is scrambled — a line of type has landed in the middle of the ingredient list — so read it as: two eggs, half a cupful of butter, one cupful of molasses, one cupful of raisins, two cupfuls of flour, and various spices; mix and bake in a rather brisk oven.
- The missing leaveningNo raising agent is listed. With a cup of molasses to two cups of flour the result will be very dense; comparable molasses cakes of the period usually call for about a teaspoon of baking soda or saleratus, dissolved in a little hot water or milk, which the acid in the molasses activates. It is likely the omission is an oversight or an assumed step.
- "Rather brisk oven"Brisk is usually given as roughly 375-400F in period usage. That is hot for a molasses batter, which scorches early because of its sugar content; dark, thick batters of this kind are more often baked at 325-350F today.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of 1900. Sorghum syrup is a close period-appropriate substitute.
- "Various spices"Left to the cook, as was usual. A workable reading is a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon each of ginger, cloves and nutmeg for two cups of flour. Allspice and mace both appear in cake chapters of this era.
- LiquidNo milk or water is listed; the moisture comes from the molasses, butter and eggs, which gives a thick batter. Some related recipes add a little milk, buttermilk or hot coffee; if you do, add it a little at a time until the batter drops heavily from the spoon.
- RaisinsFlour the raisins lightly before folding them in so they do not sink. Seeded raisins, muscats among them, were common at the time; ordinary dark raisins are fine, and chopped candied peel is in keeping.
- Yield and panThe quantities fill one 8-inch square pan or a single 8x4-inch loaf, about 35-45 minutes at 350F. Test with a skewer — molasses cakes stay moist and look underdone longer than butter cakes.
- KeepingIt improves after a day wrapped tight, and the molasses keeps it moist for the better part of a week.
Molasses gingerbreads and molasses fruit cakes were a common everyday Christmas cake in ordinary households, standing apart from the brandied, egg-rich, pound-heavy fruitcake that took weeks and cost real money. Molasses was cheap and widely used as a household sweetener, and its acidity paired with saleratus or baking soda to lift a cake. A cup of raisins and "various spices" were what made an ordinary loaf festive, and the book's failure to specify them suggests the cinnamon-ginger-clove-nutmeg register was taken for granted. The garbled printing here -- a stray line of instruction dropped into the middle of the ingredients -- is a typesetting error.