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Poor Man's Fruit Cake
One and a half cups brown sugar, two of flour, one each of but-- ter and chopped raisins, three eggs, three table-spoons sour milk,. half tea-spoon soda, half cup blackberry jam. This is excellent as well as economical. -Mrs. J. S. Robinson, Chicago, Ill.
An ingredient list with almost no method, in the way of most nineteenth-century cake receipts, which assumed the cook knew how a butter cake was put together. The proportions are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and brown sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the jam, then the flour alternately with the soured milk, and fold in the floured raisins last. Tossing the chopped raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking.
- A cup of butterTwo sticks, 8 oz or 225 g. At room temperature — cold butter will not take up air in creaming, and this cake has little chemical leavening beyond the half teaspoon of soda.
- Sour milk and sodaThe half teaspoon of soda needs the acid of genuinely soured milk to work. Cultured buttermilk is the direct replacement; ordinary milk soured with a little vinegar or lemon juice — roughly half a teaspoon to these three tablespoons — also does the job. With sweet milk alone the soda has nothing to react with and can leave a faint soapy taste.
- Brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was less refined and moister than today's light brown. Measure it packed. Dark brown gives a closer match to the molasses note the original would have had.
- The jam is structuralHalf a cup of blackberry jam supplies moisture, acid and colour, and is what makes this read as a fruit cake without candied peel or currants. Seeded or seedless both work; a stiff preserve is better than a runny one.
- Oven and panBake at 325°F. This is a heavy, sugar-rich batter that scorches before the centre sets if pushed hotter. A 9-inch tube pan or a large loaf takes roughly 55 to 70 minutes; test with a skewer at the deepest point.
- SpicingThe receipt calls for none, which is part of the economy. A teaspoon of cinnamon and a scant quarter-teaspoon each of cloves and nutmeg would not be out of keeping with other jam cakes of the period.
- YieldAbout one 9-inch cake, twelve to sixteen slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day.
"Poor man's" attached to any number of nineteenth-century dishes signalled the same thing: the shape of an expensive item built from what was already in the house. A proper fruit cake meant currants, citron, candied peel, blanched almonds and a good deal of brandy, all bought and all costly. Here chopped raisins and a half cup of blackberry jam — the sort put up at home in summer — stand in for the fruit. Jam cakes of this kind were common through the Midwest and the Upper South. Buckeye Cookery, which grew out of a book compiled in Ohio in the 1870s from contributions by named housewives, is full of these signed economies; Mrs. Robinson's note that it is "excellent as well as economical" is the sort of defence such a receipt was expected to offer.