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Citron Cake
2½ cups brown sugar 1 cup (heaping) butter and lard mixed 1 cup sour milk 1 cup citron 1½ cups currants 1½ cups raisins A little lemon peel Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon soda 4 cups Five Roses flour
A bare ingredient list in the style of the period, which assumed the cook knew how a fruit cake was put together. The proportions are sound; the method has to be supplied.
- No method givenCream the fat with the brown sugar, stir in the sour milk, then the sifted flour, salt and spices with the soda, and fold the floured fruit in last. It is a heavy batter, closer to a boiled-fruit loaf than a layer cake.
- Citron is candied peelNot the lemon-like citron fruit as sold fresh, but citron melon or citron peel preserved in sugar, sold in blocks or diced with other candied peels around the winter holidays. One cup means one cup chopped.
- Sour milk and sodaThe single teaspoon of soda is the only leavening, and it needs the acid of genuinely soured raw milk. Buttermilk is the correct substitute; a cup of fresh milk soured with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar also works.
- Butter and lard mixedA heaping cup is roughly 8 to 9 ounces total; the recipe does not say in what proportion the two fats were mixed, so equal parts is only an assumption. The lard was economy and tenderness both; all butter will give a different flavour and texture.
- No eggsThe list contains none. Eggless sour-milk and 'boiled' fruit cakes were common in this thrifty tradition, though with a telegraphic contributed list an outright omission cannot be ruled out. Expect a dense, moist, slightly crumbly cake, and do not add eggs expecting the original result.
- OvenBake slow, 300 to 325F. A cake this heavy with fruit and brown sugar scorches at the edges long before the centre sets; 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes in a lined 9-inch tube or two loaf pans, tested with a skewer.
- Flour the fruitToss the currants, raisins and citron with a spoonful of the measured flour so they suspend rather than sink. Four cups of flour is roughly 500 to 570 g depending on how it is measured, scooped flour being at the heavier end.
- Yield and keepingThe batter comes to well over 4 lb, so expect a finished cake of roughly 4 to 4½ lb. Like most fruit cakes it improves after two or three days wrapped closely.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal to sell its Five Roses flour, and it circulated in enormous numbers through Canadian kitchens in the 1910s and 1920s; the recipes were largely contributed by housewives, which explains the telegraphic ingredient lists with no method attached. Citron cake belongs to the family of sour-milk fruit cakes that a farm kitchen could make from the pantry: brown sugar, mixed fat, soda, and whatever candied peel and dried fruit had been laid in. The citron itself is generally traced to the preserved rind of the citron melon, cheaper than lemon or orange peel and a fixture of North American baking supplies well into the twentieth century, which is why it turns up here alongside currants and raisins rather than as a flavouring in its own right.