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CHRISTMAS CAKE (another way)
Take five pounds of flour, mix with it a dessert-spoonful of salt, rub in three-quarters of a pound of butter, and one pound of lard. Put in an ounce and a half of German yeast or half a pint of good fresh brewers' yeast, and knead as for common bread. If there is any difficulty about the yeast, baking-powder may be used, allowing a heaped tea-spoonful of ordinary baking-powder for every pound of material. If yeast is used, let the dough rise before adding the other ingredients. Mix in three pounds of currants, one pound and a half of moist sugar, a whole nutmeg grated, a quarter of a pound of candied lemon-peel finely minced, a table-spoonful of brandy, and four eggs well beaten. Butter the tins, and line them well with buttered paper. Bake in a moderate oven. Time to bake, about two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per cake. Sufficient for four cakes.
This is a yeast-raised fruit cake in the older English manner, closer to a rich bread than to the butter-and-egg Christmas cake that later displaced it. It is built on five pounds of flour and makes four large cakes, so scaling to a quarter is the first decision to make.
- The liquid is missingYou are told to knead as for common bread, but no water or milk is given. A bread dough of this kind needs roughly 2 1/2 to 3 pints of warm liquid for 5 lb of flour, added gradually until the dough comes together; the fat and eggs later will slacken it further. Add the liquid by feel rather than trusting any single figure, since flours vary.
- German yeastGerman yeast is fresh compressed baker's yeast. An ounce and a half is about 40 g fresh yeast, equivalent to roughly 15 g (about 4 1/2 teaspoons) instant dried yeast for the full 5 lb of flour. Half a pint of brewers' yeast is a liquid barm and has no modern shop equivalent.
- The baking-powder alternative"a heaped tea-spoonful of ordinary baking-powder for every pound of material" is ambiguous: it may mean per pound of the whole mixture rather than per pound of flour, which for this recipe would be a great deal of powder. If you go the chemical route, treat it as about 2 teaspoons baking powder per pound of flour and mix and bake without delay.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined soft sugar with the molasses left in, closest to modern light or dark soft brown sugar. Granulated white will work but the crumb will be paler and drier.
- Proportions to expectThree pounds of currants to five of flour makes a densely studded dough, and the 1 lb of lard is doing much of the work that butter does in a modern cake. Substituting all butter for the lard gives a richer, less bready result.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere in the region of 350-375F (175-190C). At that heat a cake this size will colour long before the centre sets, so keep the buttered paper lining tall, tent the top with more paper after the first 45 minutes, and start testing with a skewer at 1 3/4 hours.
- Tins and yieldThe named ingredients alone come to something over 12 lb, and with the kneading liquid the dough will be nearer 15 lb, so each of the four cakes is around 3 to 3 1/2 lb: 8-inch round or 7-inch square deep tins are about right. Grease and line base and sides, as instructed, with paper rather than relying on butter alone.
- RisingLet the plain dough rise once before working in the fruit, sugar, spice, peel, brandy and eggs, as written. After the fruit goes in, give the shaped cakes a second slow rise in the tins until visibly puffed; the sugar and fat will make this slower than a bread dough.
- KeepingWith only a tablespoonful of brandy across four cakes this is not a keeping cake in the way a heavily fed fruit cake is. Eat within a week, or freeze.
Before chemical leavens took over the British cake table, rich fruit cakes were raised with ale barm or baker's yeast, and this recipe is a survival of that older practice: a spiced, fruited bread dough enriched after its first rise. The alternative given, baking powder, was a comparatively recent arrival in domestic cookery when Cassell's Dictionary was compiled in the later nineteenth century, and the way the two methods sit side by side here suggests a kitchen in transition. "German yeast" was the common name for compressed fresh yeast, much of it imported and pressed into cakes, and over the later nineteenth century it appears to have gradually displaced the brewers' barm that cooks had previously begged or bought from a local brewery. The costing of 1s. 4d. a cake, and a yield of four at a time, suggests a large household or a family baking once for the whole season.