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PLUM CAKE (another way)
Beat one pound of butter to a cream, and mix with it three well-beaten eggs, two pounds of best flour, one pound of currants, one pound of sugar, five heaped tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder, and a pinch of salt. Mix rather lightly with lukewarm milk. Put the dough into buttered tins, and bake immediately. This cake is very good, but does not improve with keeping more than a day or two. Time to bake, one or two hours, according to the size of the tins. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for two or three cakes.
A plain currant cake in the old style: heavy on butter and fruit, light on eggs, and leavened with baking powder rather than long beating. The one thing the recipe does not give you is the amount of milk, which is where the whole thing succeeds or fails.
- The milk is the hingeNo quantity is given because the cook was expected to judge it. Add lukewarm milk a little at a time until you have a stiff dropping consistency — the batter should fall reluctantly from the spoon, not pour. Expect somewhere around 1 to 1 1/2 cups for the full quantity; too much and the fruit sinks.
- "Plum" means no plumsIn British baking "plum" has meant dried fruit — currants, raisins, sultanas — since long before this book. Here the fruit is entirely currants (the small dried Zante grape, not fresh redcurrants).
- Weights, in cupsOne pound of butter is 4 sticks; two pounds of flour is roughly 7 cups; a pound of sugar about 2 1/4 cups; a pound of currants about 3 cups. This is a large batch — halving it is sensible for a modern household.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 325F for a cake this dense and buttery; 350F will brown the crust before the centre sets. Cover the top loosely with foil if it colours early.
- Baking powderFive heaped teaspoons for 2 lb flour works out at roughly seven to eight level teaspoons, which is close to modern practice, though Victorian powders varied in strength. Use about 8 level teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder for the full quantity, sifted through the flour.
- "Bake immediately"Meant literally. Chemical leavening starts working the moment the liquid goes in, so have the tins buttered and the oven up to temperature before you mix.
- Tins and timingThe recipe reckons the batch sufficient for two or three cakes, so have a third tin ready if you are using 8-inch rounds or 2 lb loaf tins. Loaves need close to the full two hours; shallower rounds nearer one. Test with a skewer to the centre — it should come out clean and hot.
- KeepingThe book is honest that this one goes stale fast. With only three eggs and no treacle, honey or spirit to hold moisture, it is a two-day cake. It toasts well on day three.
Cassell's gives several plum cakes, and this one belongs to the cheaper end of the family — the sort of everyday currant cake a household made for tea rather than for Christmas. The tell is the baking powder. Richer plum cakes of the period were raised on eggs and hours of hand-beating, or on yeast; commercial baking powders, widely sold in Britain from the middle of the nineteenth century, let a cook produce something cake-like with three eggs instead of a dozen and no long beating at all. The stated cost of 1s. 8d. for two or three cakes marks it as economical by Victorian standards, and the frank admission that it "does not improve with keeping" is exactly the trade-off: cheap, quick, and best eaten while it is fresh.