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Scotch Fruit Cake
A cup butter, two of white sugar, four of sifted flour, threefourths cup sour milk, half tea-spoon soda, nine eggs beaten separately, one pound raisins, half pound currants, a fourth pound citron; cream the butter and sugar, add milk gradually, then beaten yolks of eggs, and lastly, while stirring in flour, the whites well whipped. Flavor with one tea-spoon lemon, and one of vanilla extract, and have raisins chopped a little, or, better still, seeded, and citron sliced thin. Wash and dry currants before using, and flour all fruit slightly. In putting cake in pan, place first a thin layer of cake, then sprinkle in some of the three kinds of fruit, then a layer of cake, and so on, always finishing off with a thin layer of cake. Bake in a moderate oven for two hours. Tested by many and has never failed. - Mrs. J. H. Shearer.
A very large, rich butter cake with the fruit layered in rather than folded through. The batter fills roughly a 10-inch tube pan, or two 9x5-inch loaf pans with a little left over; plan the pans before you start creaming.
- The oven numberThe oven — "a moderate oven" is not a number in this book; there are no thermometers behind it. Two hours at 350F will darken the outside of a cake this size well before the center sets. Bake at 325F and start testing at 1 hour 45 minutes; a skewer in the center should come out clean of batter.
- Sour milkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk left to clabber, and it was acidic enough to react with the soda. Use buttermilk, or stir 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar into 3/4 cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. Half a teaspoon of soda to 3/4 cup of acid liquid is correctly proportioned; do not add more.
- Nine eggs, beaten separatelyThis is the cake's only real lift beyond the small dose of soda. Whip the whites to soft, glossy peaks and fold them in with the last of the flour rather than stirring hard, or the volume collapses and the crumb turns close and heavy.
- Raisins and the seedingThe direction to seed the raisins dates from before seedless varieties were common; modern dark raisins need only a rough chop. A pound is about 3 cups, and the half pound of currants about 1 1/2 cups — these are dried Zante currants, not fresh berries.
- CitronCitron here is candied citron peel, sold in blocks or diced. It is stocked mainly around the winter holidays; candied orange or lemon peel stands in acceptably at the same weight, about 3/4 cup diced.
- Flouring the fruitTossing the fruit in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps it from sinking and from gumming together. Dry the washed currants thoroughly first or the flour turns to paste.
- Why it is layeredAlternating thin layers of batter with scattered fruit was a way to distribute heavy fruit through a slack batter without overworking it. Finish with batter on top, as directed, so no raisins sit exposed on the surface where they will scorch.
- Cooling and keepingLet it stand in the pan 20 minutes before turning out; a cake this dense will tear if moved hot. Wrapped well, it improves over two or three days and keeps a week or more.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) collected its recipes from named contributors, and the attributions — "Tested by many and has never failed. — Mrs. J. H. Shearer" — functioned as a warranty in a period before standardized measures and thermostats. The "Scotch" label is loose: unlike a spiced English plum cake or a Scottish black bun wrapped in pastry, this is a pale, unspiced butter cake flavored only with lemon and vanilla — not, in other words, a fruit cake of the sort the name might suggest. Cakes of this scale, nine eggs and four cups of flour, belonged to occasions rather than to weeknights, and the direction to seed the raisins by hand is a reminder of how much labor a single tea cake could represent in a household kitchen.