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Plum Cake, Rich
Put a pound and a half of butter into a good-sized bowl, and beat it to a cream. Mix with it the whites of eight fresh eggs whisked to a froth, and afterwards the yolks well beaten, and add a dessert-spoonful of salt, a pound of powdered sugar, a pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants washed, picked, and dried, eight ounces each of candied lemon and citron cut into narrow strips, half an ounce of mixed spices, consisting of nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice, all pounded to a powder, half a pound of almonds, blanched and pounded, three or four lumps of sugar rubbed upon the rind of four oranges, and then powdered. Add each ingredient separately, and beat it well in before adding another. A glassful of brandy may be stirred in if liked. If this cake is to be light, it should be beaten fully three-quarters of an hour. Line a tin with double folds of buttered paper, pour in the mixture, and bake the cake in a moderate oven. Put twelve folds of paper under the cake, and four or five on the top of it, to prevent it burning. Time to bake, three hours if made into one cake, one hour and a half each if made into two. Probable cost, 5s. 6d., without the brandy. Sufficient for one large or two small cakes.
A full-scale Victorian fruit cake with no chemical leavening at all — the air beaten into the butter and eggs is the only lift, which is why the recipe insists on three-quarters of an hour of beating. A stand mixer does the same work in a fraction of the time.
- The hinge: aerationWith no baking powder, everything depends on creaming the butter thoroughly and folding in the whisked whites without knocking them down. Cream the butter until pale and genuinely fluffy, and add the heavy dry ingredients and fruit gently at the end rather than beating them in hard as the original directs.
- "Moderate oven" here means lowThe book gives no temperature for the term, but a cake of this mass baking for three hours needs something in the region of 275-300F. The twelve folds of paper beneath and four or five on top are the period's way of moderating a fierce coal range; a doubled parchment collar around a lined 9-10 inch deep tin, plus a loose paper cap for the last hour, does the same job.
- CurrantsZante currants — small dried grapes — not fresh blackcurrants and not raisins. Two pounds is correct for this batter. Modern packaged fruit needs no washing, only a check for stems.
- Candied peel and citronCitron is the thick-rinded candied fruit sold in blocks or dice; supermarket "mixed peel" is mostly orange and lemon and is a thinner, sweeter substitute. Half a pound of each — eight ounces of lemon and eight of citron — was intended to be cut by hand into strips, which distributes better through a stiff batter than fine dice.
- Sugar rubbed on orange rindAn old method of extracting zest oil: loaf-sugar lumps were dragged over the whole orange until saturated and coloured, then crushed. The finely grated zest of four oranges gives the same flavour.
- AlmondsBlanched and pounded means a coarse-to-fine almond meal made in a mortar with a few drops of liquid to stop it oiling. Ground almonds from a packet work; a short pulse in a processor gives a texture closer to the original.
- Salt and butterA dessertspoon is about two teaspoons. That is a great deal of salt by modern standards, and Victorian butter was usually salted on top of it — with unsalted butter, a teaspoon and a half is nearer the intended balance.
- The brandy glassA wine or spirit glass of the period is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup, though period equivalents vary. It can be added to the batter, or the baked cake fed with a spoonful or two over several weeks.
- Yield and testingThe batter runs to something over eight pounds — one very large cake or two of about 8 inches. Test with a skewer at the centre and expect the full three hours; the cake keeps for months wrapped in paper and foil, and improves for the first few weeks.
"Plum" in an English cake name almost never means plums: from the seventeenth century onward it stood for dried fruit generally, chiefly currants and raisins, the same usage that survives in plum pudding. A rich plum cake like this one was the ancestor of the British wedding and Christmas cake — heavy with fruit, spice, candied citron and almonds, bound with a great deal of butter and egg and lifted only by beating, since it predates the general household use of baking powder. The costing of 5s. 6d. is a reminder of what such a cake meant in a Victorian household — a substantial outlay, made for a wedding, a christening or Christmas, and expected to keep and be cut over weeks.