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Nut and Raisin Cake
1/3 cup Cottolene. 1 cup fine sugar. 3 eggs unbeaten. 1 cup pecan nut meats. 2/3 cup raisins. 2 cups pastry flour. 4 teaspoons baking powder. 3/4 cup milk.
Grated rind of half an orange. 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. 1/4 teaspoon mace. 1/4 teaspoon salt.
PROCESS: Cream Cottolene, add sugar gradually, stirring constantly, add eggs, one at a time and beating each in thoroughly before adding another. Pass nuts and raisins through meat chopper, then mix with flour sifted with baking powder, salt and spices; add alternately to first mixture with milk, beating constantly. Turn mixture into a well-greased tube pan and bake thirty-five to forty minutes in a moderate oven. Spread with
A plain butter-style spice cake in a tube pan, from a book written to promote a particular brand of shortening. The text breaks off mid-sentence at the icing, so plan on a simple frosting of your own.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening, discontinued for decades. Use 1/3 cup vegetable shortening for the closest texture, or softened unsalted butter for better flavour.
- Moderate ovenTake this as roughly 350F; period guides put a moderate oven anywhere from about 350 to 375F. The stated 35 to 40 minutes should suit a tube pan of this batter; test with a skewer in the thickest part of the ring.
- Pastry flourSoft, low-protein flour, between cake flour and all-purpose. Half all-purpose and half cake flour is the nearer match; the cornstarch trick (removing 4 tablespoons from 2 cups all-purpose and replacing with cornstarch) gives something softer than pastry flour but will still work. Sift together as the recipe directs.
- The baking powderFour teaspoons to 2 cups flour is about double modern practice, likely reflecting the single-acting powders of the period. With current double-acting powder, 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons should give a better crumb and avoid any soapy aftertaste.
- Meat chopperThe hand-cranked grinder was the standard tool for nuts and dried fruit. A few pulses in a food processor does the same job; stop while the pecans are still coarse or they turn to paste.
- Eggs unbeatenThe instruction is deliberate: the eggs go in whole, one at a time, and the beating between additions is what carries the air. Do not shortcut this by tipping all three in at once.
- Flouring the fruitMixing the ground nuts and raisins with the dry ingredients keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the ring. Worth doing even if you grind them finer than the original intends.
- Yield and finishingOne tube cake, around 10 to 12 slices; the recipe gives no pan size. The missing line presumably called for some kind of icing; an orange glaze made with the remaining half of the orange suits the spices.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and issued by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which manufactured Cottolene — a cooking fat of cottonseed oil and beef suet marketed hard from the 1890s onward as a cheaper, more wholesome substitute for lard. That commercial purpose explains why Cottolene heads the ingredient list here and recurs throughout the book: the volume is a menu planner and an advertisement at once. The cake itself belongs to a familiar American family of spiced nut-and-raisin loaves. Mace, then still a common pantry spice alongside cinnamon, has quietly dropped out of most modern baking.