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New England Election Cake
1 cup bread dough slightly rounded. 6 large figs chopped fine. ⅓ cup Cottolene. 2 eggs. 1 cup soft brown sugar. 1/2 cup sour milk. 2/3 cup seeded and shredded raisins. 1 teaspoon salt. 1¼ cups flour. ½ teaspoon soda. 1/4 teaspoon cloves. 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
PROCESS: Cream Cottolene and work it in the dough with the hand. Add eggs well beaten, sugar, soda dissolved in milk, fruit dredged with one-fourth cup flour, remainder flour mixed and sifted with spices and salt. Beat thoroughly with the hand. Turn mixture into a well-buttered, brick-shaped bread pan, cover and let rise for one and a quarter hours in a warm place. Bake one hour in a moderate oven. Spread with
A yeast-raised fruit loaf built on a lump of bread dough rather than a chemical leavener alone. Two of the printed quantities are clearly garbled, and the instructions break off mid-sentence, so read the whole thing before starting.
- CottoleneA brand of shortening made by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which sponsored this book; it was based on cottonseed oil, blended with beef suet. Substitute an equal measure of vegetable shortening, or butter if you want more flavour.
- The fat quantity is wrongThe fat quantity looks wrong -- 1½ cups of shortening against roughly a cup of sugar and a few cups of flour would make a very greasy batter and work against the rise. A printed figure of ½ cup would sit far better with the rest of the proportions; treat this as a likely typographical error rather than a conversion problem.
- The flour quantity is missing"1/4 cups flour" cannot be right when a quarter cup of it is taken out to dredge the fruit and the method then calls for the "remainder". The leading digit has evidently dropped out of the type; work to a stiff, spoonable batter rather than measuring blind.
- Bread doughOne cup of risen white bread dough, taken from a batch at first rise. It supplies both the yeast and a mature, slightly sour flavour. If you are not baking bread, an equal weight of a plain lean dough left to rise until doubled does the same job.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here is naturally soured raw milk. Use buttermilk. The soda neutralises its acid and gives lift alongside the yeast; dissolve it in the milk as directed so it disperses evenly through a stiff mixture.
- Rising and panA "brick-shaped bread pan" is best read as a plain rectangular loaf tin, near enough a modern 9x5-inch. An hour and a quarter in a warm place is a guide, not a rule; go by volume, when the dough has risen by roughly half again.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F, though period sources put it anywhere from 350 to 375F. An hour is realistic for a dense fruited loaf this size, but check the centre with a skewer and tent the top with foil if the sugar and figs colour early.
- The unfinished lineThe text stops at "Spread with" and the rest is lost. A plain confectioners' sugar icing is the likeliest guess, since iced election cakes are common enough. Ice it while barely warm, or leave it plain.
- YieldOne loaf, 10 to 12 slices.
Election cake belongs to the New England tradition of baking a large, yeast-raised, fruit-and-spice loaf for the annual spring election days, when townspeople travelled to vote and militia companies mustered. Hartford, Connecticut is the town most often named as its home, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century recipes for it are enormous — measured in pounds of flour and quarts of yeast, meant to feed a crowd. What survives here is the domesticated descendant: a single loaf, scaled to a household oven, leavened partly by a borrowed cup of bread dough. 52 Sunday Dinners was published as promotional cookery for Cottolene, a cottonseed shortening sold as a cheaper, lighter replacement for lard, which explains why the fat is named by brand.