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DATE CAKES (for Dessert)
Insert in place of the stones, which should be carefully removed, blanched almonds. Line a square tin with rice-paper; fill in layers of dates, and press down with a weight. Turn out on a glass dish. Garnish with slices of orange. Probable cost, 10d. to 1s. per pound.
A no-cook sweetmeat for the dessert course: stoned dates stuffed with almonds, pressed into a block and sliced. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the terms have drifted.
- Rice-paper is edible waferThe rice-paper meant here is the white edible wafer sold for macaroons and nougat, not the translucent Vietnamese spring-roll wrapper and not craft paper. It lines the tin so the block turns out cleanly and is eaten along with the cake.
- Blanched almondsWhole sweet almonds with the skins slipped off after a minute in boiling water. Toasting them lightly first gives more flavour than the recipe expects, though it darkens the cut face.
- Choose soft datesMedjool or another moist variety presses into a solid block; dry, leathery dates will not cohere and the slices will crumble. Warming the dates slightly makes them more willing.
- PressingWeight it heavily and give it several hours, preferably overnight in a cool place. A second tin filled with tins of food, set on top, does the job.
- Turning out and cuttingRun a knife around the sides, invert, and cut with a wet, heavy blade.
- The cost note"10d. to 1s. per pound" is pre-decimal: ten pence to one shilling, twelve pence to the shilling. It is a price for the dates, not a modern guide to anything.
- ServingMeant for the dessert, the fruit-and-sweetmeats course at the end of dinner. The orange slices garnish the dish, and their acidity sits well against a very sweet, very dense confection.
Cassell's marks this one 'for Dessert', and that is the key to it: the Victorian dessert was a display course of fruit, nuts, bonbons and glass dishes, assembled rather than cooked. Dates arrived in Britain in quantity from North Africa and the Persian Gulf, pressed into boxes and slabs, and were cheap enough by the later nineteenth century to be a staple of Christmas dessert alongside figs and muscatels; the almond-in-the-date pairing is also found in Middle Eastern and Iberian sweetmeats. Edible rice-paper wafer was a standard confectioner's material of the period, used wherever something sticky needed a base that could be eaten with it.