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Black Cake (One pound flour one)
One pound flour, one of currants, one of raisins, one of sugar, half pound citron, half pound chopped figs, three-fourths pound butter, ten eggs leaving out two whites, tea-cup molasses, one of sour cream and soda, one gill brandy or good whisky, half cup cinnamon, two table-spoons allspice and cloves, four table-spoons jam. -Mrs. Gov. Kirkwood, Iowa.
This is a formula, not a method: the book assumed any cook could take a list of proportions and build a rich fruit cake from it. A few of the quantities also need reading with care.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs a few at a time, then the molasses, sour cream and spirits, then the flour sifted with the spices, and lastly the fruit and jam. Dredging the currants, raisins and chopped citron and figs in a little of the measured flour keeps them from sinking.
- A gillHalf a cup. One gill of brandy or whisky is enough to perfume the whole cake without making it wet.
- Teacup and half cupA teacup in this period is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, a coffee cup a full cup, though the recipe itself defines neither. The "one of sour cream and soda" most likely means a teacup of sour cream with about a teaspoon of soda stirred into it; add it while it is still foaming.
- Half cup cinnamonRead this as a printer's excess or as a spice measured very loosely by an 1870s cook. Half a cup of ground cinnamon plus two tablespoons each of allspice and cloves is far beyond modern palates; a tablespoon of cinnamon and a teaspoon or so each of allspice and cloves suits the same weight of batter.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks and chopped by hand. Candied orange or lemon peel is the nearest substitute; it is sweeter and softer, so cut back slightly.
- The jamFour tablespoons of dark preserve -- blackberry, damson or grape -- is there for colour and moisture as much as flavour. It is part of what makes the cake "black" along with the molasses and cloves.
- Pans and ovenThe ingredients add up to something closer to eight pounds of batter. Divide it between two 9- or 10-inch tube pans or three or four loaf pans, lined with buttered parchment, and bake slowly -- around 300F -- for two and a half to three and a half hours depending on depth; the recipe itself gives no oven direction. Test with a skewer; the crust darkens long before the centre is set.
- KeepingRich fruit cakes of this kind were made weeks ahead, wrapped in cloth and fed occasionally with a spoonful of the same brandy. Fresh from the oven it is crumbly; after a week wrapped and cool it slices cleanly.
"Black cake" is a name often traced to the darkest end of the British plum-cake family -- the wedding and Christmas cake, blackened by molasses, cloves and dried fruit, and steadied with brandy so it would keep through a winter -- though the name is also strongly associated with Caribbean baking and the lineage is not settled. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (Marysville, Ohio, 1877) filled its cake chapter with contributions solicited by name from women across the Midwest, and a governor's wife heading a recipe was part of the book's appeal: it read as a network of real households rather than an anonymous manual. This one is credited to Mrs. Gov. Kirkwood of Iowa, the wife of Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa's Civil War-era governor. The bare list is characteristic of the period; proportions were the transferable knowledge, while creaming, spicing and judging a slow oven were assumed to live in the cook's hands.