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Yorkshire Fruit Loaves
2 lbs. flour 3/4 cupful Crisco 1 teaspoonful salt 2 cupfuls milk 1 yeast cake 1 cupful sugar 1 cupful sultana raisins 1 cupful currants 1/2 cupful seeded raisins 1/2 cupful chopped candied citron peel 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger 1/2 teaspoonful powdered mace Heat Crisco in milk, then cool and add yeast cake mixed with a little sugar; stir in flour and salt, and allow to rise four hours. Mix sugar, fruit, peel, and spices into risen dough. Let rise again then divide into two Criscoed loaf tins. Allow to rise fifteen minutes, then bake in moderate oven one and a half hours.
Sufficient for two medium-sized loaves.
An enriched yeast dough weighted with a pound or so of dried fruit, of the kind sold across the north of England as a tea loaf. The quantities work; the rising times as printed are the part to treat with suspicion.
- The hinge: the second riseAdding a cup of sugar and three cups of heavy fruit to risen dough knocks the yeast back sharply. The fifteen minutes given after panning is far too short — expect 45 to 90 minutes in the tins, until the dough has visibly domed and springs back slowly when pressed.
- Yeast cakeA compressed yeast cake of the period was commonly the small 0.6 oz size, though cakes were sold in more than one weight. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast. The instruction to cool the milk matters: hot liquid kills yeast, so let the Crisco-and-milk mixture come down to lukewarm before adding it.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold, though reformulated to remove trans fats. Butter works and tastes better in a fruit loaf; use the same 3/4 cup, melted into the milk.
- Flour by weight2 lbs is about 7 cups of all-purpose flour. Weigh it if you can — this dough is stiff and an extra cup scooped by volume will make it dry.
- Moderate ovenConventionally around 350F (period usage ran 350-375F). An hour and a half at that temperature will darken the crust well before the centre is done; tent with foil after 45 minutes and pull the loaves at an internal temperature of 190-200F, which may come sooner than 90 minutes.
- Sultanas, currants, citronSultanas are golden raisins; currants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh berries. Candied citron is still sold at holiday time and can be replaced with candied orange or lemon peel. Tossing the fruit in a little of the measured flour helps keep it from sinking.
- TinsTwo standard 9x5-inch loaf pans, greased.
- KeepingLike most fruit loaves it slices better on the second day and keeps a week wrapped. Traditionally served sliced and buttered with tea.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s and 1920s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to promote a single product, in this case Procter & Gamble's Crisco, introduced in 1911 as an all-vegetable replacement for lard and butter. That explains why shortening appears in a recipe that in any English household book of the same period would simply have called for butter or dripping, and why the tins are "Criscoed" rather than greased. The loaf itself is older than the fat: sweet yeast doughs studded with dried vine fruit and candied peel were standard teatime baking across Yorkshire and the north of England, sold under names like tea loaf and spice loaf, and often said to have been made on baking day from a portion of the household bread dough enriched with whatever fruit and sugar were in the house.