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Irish Cake
Put a pound of good fresh butter into a large bowl, and turn it back to a cream with the hand. When well turned, beat into it three-quarters of a pound of dried sugar, finely sifted and made hot before the fire. Separate the yolks from the whites of nine eggs, and, when well beaten, stir in the yolks, keeping the hand moved round in the same direction for about twenty minutes, when dredge in by degrees a pound and a quarter of dry flour, mixing well, as before, for another twenty minutes. Add four ounces of blanched almonds, sliced, the same of candied peel, one pound or more of well-washed and dried currants, a glass of brandy, and, lastly, stir in gently the whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Bake in a hot oven and in a round buttered tin. Time, an hour and a half to two hours. Probable cost, 3s. 10d. Sufficient for two cakes.
A pound-cake-and-fruit hybrid with no baking powder in it: every bit of lift comes from air beaten into the butter and the whisked whites, which is why the original demands forty minutes of stirring. The one thing to correct is the oven.
- Ignore "a hot oven"Victorian "hot" is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-450F, and a rich fruited batter this size would scorch at that heat. Bake at 325F, or 300F if your tins are deep; the stated hour and a half to two hours suits the lower heat far better than a fierce one.
- The hinge is the aerationThere is no raising agent at all. The creaming, the twenty minutes on the yolks and the twenty on the flour exist purely to build and keep air. A stand mixer does the first two stages in five to eight minutes on medium, but fold the flour in by hand and stop as soon as it disappears.
- Weights in modern terms1 lb butter (450 g), 12 oz sugar (340 g), 1 lb 4 oz plain flour (565 g), 4 oz almonds, 4 oz candied peel, 1 lb or more currants, 9 eggs. "A glass" of brandy in this period is a wineglass, roughly 2 fl oz or 60 ml.
- "Dried sugar... made hot before the fire"Loaf sugar was crushed and sifted, then warmed so it dissolved into the butter rather than sitting gritty. Modern caster sugar needs neither drying nor warming; use it straight.
- Currants and peelNineteenth-century dried fruit arrived full of grit and stalks, hence "well-washed and dried." Today's currants need no washing, but toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in so they do not sink.
- AlmondsBlanched and sliced means whole almonds skinned and cut lengthways, coarser than packet flaked almonds. Either works; the sliced ones give more texture through the crumb.
- Tins and liningButter alone will not save a two-hour bake. Line two 7- or 8-inch round tins with parchment, base and sides, and tie a band of brown paper round the outside to shield the edges.
- Yield and testing"Sufficient for two cakes" means two substantial cakes, on these quantities more like 2 to 2.5 lb each, a dozen or so slices apiece. Test with a skewer at 90 minutes; it should come out clean and the top spring back. Cool in the tin, and the cake improves after a day or two wrapped.
The label "Irish" was applied loosely to rich fruited cakes in English cookery books of the period, and no settled Irish original is on record; note that the spirit called for here is brandy, not whiskey. What the recipe really records is the pre-chemical era of baking, when a rich cake rose on nothing but muscle: stirring at length in one direction was common advice, on the traditional belief that changing direction knocked the air back out. The stated probable cost of 3s 10d was a substantial sum for a late-Victorian household, which suggests a celebration cake - Christmas, a christening, a wedding - rather than everyday teatime baking. The instruction to work with the hand is literal: cooks creamed butter with the bare hand, which warmed and softened it as it worked.