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Apple Sauce Cake (Eggless) (Cups sugar No cup lard)
2 cups sugar No. 2 1 cup lard or butter 2½ cups apple sauce (unsweetened) 4 cups Five Roses flour 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 3 teaspoons soda 2 cups stoned raisins
This is a formula rather than a set of directions — the book assumed you knew how a fruit cake batter goes together. Here is what the shorthand means and how to handle it.
- Method, since none is givenCream the lard or butter with the sugar, beat in the applesauce, then fold in the flour sifted with the spices and soda, and lastly the raisins. The batter will be thick and heavy, closer to a fruit cake than a layer cake.
- "Sugar No. 2"Probably a grade of soft yellow sugar: Canadian refiners of the period sold yellow sugars by number, the lower numbers being darker and less refined than white. Light brown sugar, packed, is the closest ready substitute.
- The soda is highThree teaspoons for four cups of flour is a lot even with acidic applesauce behind it. With modern baking soda, two teaspoons is ample; the full three can leave a soapy, metallic edge and a very dark crumb.
- Five Roses flourA hard spring-wheat Canadian flour, generally stronger than most American all-purpose. Ordinary unbleached all-purpose works; the book gives no weights, so measure lightly rather than packing the cup, and mix only until combined.
- Unsweetened applesauceThe instruction matters — the sugar is already accounted for. Modern jarred applesauce is often sweetened, so read the label or the cake will be cloying. A thick, homemade sauce gives a better crumb than a thin, watery one.
- LardLard gives a tender, slightly savoury crumb and was the cheaper choice. Butter is fine and tastes better to most palates now; shortening also works. Whichever you use, have it soft, not melted.
- Stoned raisinsRaisins with the seeds picked out, a chore the period cook often did by hand. Raisins sold today are almost all seedless varieties, so nothing extra is needed. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour so they stay suspended in the batter.
- Pan and ovenThe recipe names no pan and no oven at all. A batter this size suits two 9x5 inch loaf pans, a 10-inch tube pan, or a 9x13. A moderate oven of about 350F, 50 to 60 minutes for loaves and up to 70 for a tube pan, until a skewer comes out clean, is a reasonable modern guess.
- KeepingLike most spiced fruit cakes it improves after a day wrapped tightly, and it slices better cold than warm.
Eggless, milkless and butterless cakes filled the cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s, when eggs were seasonal and expensive and wartime conservation campaigns pressed home the point; applesauce did double duty as sweetener, moisture and, with soda, part of the leavening. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal to promote its Five Roses flour, which is why the flour is named in the ingredient list. Recipes of this kind were collected from customers, and their telegraphic style reflects a household where a cook needed the proportions, not the procedure. The generous soda and the acidity of the fruit put this cake in the same family as the chemically leavened spice and molasses cakes that dominated North American home baking.