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Fruit Cake (Three pounds butter three)
Three pounds butter, three of brown sugar, beaten to a cream, three of flour, six of currants, six of raisins, after seeds are removed, one of citron sliced thin, three glasses brandy, twenty-eight eggs, one ounce cinnamon, one of grated nutmeg, three-quarters ounce cloves, half ounce mace; roll. the raisins, currants and citron in part of the flour. - Miss H. D. Martin, New York City. FRUIT CAKE./ One pound brown sugar, one of butter, one of eggs, one of flour, two of raisins, two of currants, half pound citron, à nutmeg, tablespoon cloves, one of allspice, half pint brandy, and two tea-spoons baking-powder. After baking, while yet warm, pour over cake a half pint wine. This makes the cake delicious. - Miss Angie Skinner, Somerset..
Two contributed fruit cake formulas, the first on a scale meant for a wedding or a winter's worth of gifts. Both are pound-cake style batters carrying several times their own weight in fruit, and both want a long, low bake.
- Scale before anything elseMiss Martin's recipe runs to roughly 25 pounds of batter and fruit and would fill several large loaf tins. Divide it by six to get a workable single cake; Miss Skinner's comes to about 9 pounds by its own weights, enough for two or three 9-inch loaves or a large tube cake and a loaf besides.
- Ingredients given by weight"One of eggs" means a pound of eggs, which is about nine large eggs out of the shell, weighed without shells. The eggs behind the count of twenty-eight in the first recipe were probably smaller than a modern large egg, so count on the weight rather than the number if you scale it.
- Glasses of brandyA "glass" here is a wine glass, which period measure tables usually put at about 2 fluid ounces, so three glasses is roughly 3/4 cup. This is genuinely approximate and Victorian wine glasses varied; err low, since too much liquid will make the batter break.
- Currants and raisinsCurrants are dried Zante grapes, sold as such, not fresh red currants. "After seeds are removed" reflects the muscat raisins of the period; modern seedless raisins need no attention, and rolling all the fruit in a little of the measured flour still does what it did then, which is keep it suspended rather than sunk.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks or diced at holiday season. If you cannot find it, candied orange and lemon peel together are the nearest substitute in weight and behaviour.
- OvenBake at 275-300F. A cake this dense in a hot oven sets a crust and stays raw inside; line the tins with two thicknesses of parchment and reckon on 3 to 4 hours for a large loaf, testing with a skewer at the centre.
- LeaveningThe first recipe has none and relies entirely on thoroughly creamed butter and sugar plus well-beaten eggs, which is correct for the style. The two teaspoons in the second would have been a single-acting powder; with a modern double-acting powder a scant measure is enough.
- Spices"A nutmeg" is one whole nutmeg grated, about 2 to 3 teaspoons. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg at these quantities tastes flat and dusty.
- The wine poured overDo this while the cake is still warm and in the tin so the liquid soaks in rather than running off. Then wrap in a brandy-dampened cloth and foil and keep in a tin for a few weeks; these cakes are built to age and are harsh eaten fresh.
The recipes here, said to come from Buckeye Cookery, were collected by name and town, and the two fruit cakes are typical of how such books were assembled: a contributor sent in what she actually made, at the scale she actually made it. Miss Martin's version calls for three pounds of butter, along with eggs, brandy, citron and spice. The technique is the older English one, generally traced to the rich fruited "plum cakes" of the eighteenth century, in which no chemical leavening appears at all and lift comes from creamed butter and long egg-beating; Miss Skinner's use of baking powder marks the shift already under way in American kitchens of the 1870s. Soaking a finished cake with wine or spirit served the same double purpose it does now, flavour and keeping quality, in an era when a cake might be expected to last from autumn baking into the new year.