Imperial Cake
One-half pound flour, one-half pound sugar, one-half pound butter, one and one-half pounds blanched almonds, one pound raisins, one-half pound citron, two tablespoons brandy, five eggs, one nutmeg.
This is a formula rather than a method: the book gives proportions and assumes the cook knows how a rich cake is built. What follows fills in the missing half.
- The weights in cupsHalf a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups; half a pound of sugar about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; half a pound of butter is 2 sticks. The fruit and nuts are weighed after preparation — 1½ lb blanched almonds is roughly 5 cups.
- This is a pound-cake frameEqual half-pounds of flour, sugar and butter with five eggs is the pound-cake ratio scaled down, carrying an enormous load of fruit and nuts. Cream butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour, and add the brandy and nutmeg last.
- Flour the fruitToss the raisins, sliced citron and almonds with a few spoonfuls of the measured flour before folding them in. With three pounds of solids against half a pound of flour, unfloured fruit sinks straight to the bottom.
- Chop, do not grind, the almondsBlanched almonds here means skinned whole nuts, sliced or coarsely chopped so they read as texture. Ground almonds turn the crumb dense and oily.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks or tubs at holiday time. Rinse off surface sugar if it is heavily coated and slice thin; substitute candied orange peel if you cannot find it.
- NutmegOne whole nutmeg, grated, is about 2 to 2½ teaspoons — assertive but correct for this style of cake. Grate it fresh; pre-ground is a fraction of the strength.
- Oven and timeBake slow: 300 to 325F. In a lined and greased 9- or 10-inch tube or deep round pan, expect 1¾ to 2½ hours. Cover the top loosely with foil once it colours, and test with a skewer at the centre.
- Yield and keepingSomething over 4 lb of finished cake, cut in thin slices. Like all brandied fruit cakes it improves after a few days wrapped tightly; it will hold a week or more at room temperature.
"Imperial cake" appears in American household books through the second half of the nineteenth century, and the name is often taken as a flourish in the manner of "queen's cake" rather than a reference to any particular court. Structurally it is a pound cake carrying an extravagant weight of almonds, raisins and citron, closer to a light fruit cake than to a plain tea loaf, and its cost is the point: candied citron, imported almonds and brandy were all things a household bought deliberately for a cake meant to be seen. If it is placed under Supper, that would reflect a period habit rather than an oddity, since evening supper in many homes meant tea, cold meat and cut cake rather than a cooked meal, and a dense keeping cake like this one could be baked days ahead and sliced from all week.