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Poor Man's Cake
2 cups brown sugar ½ pound lard 1 teaspoon (scant) salt 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon soda 1 cup currants 1½ cups water 3½ cups Five Roses flour Bake 50 minutes in moderate oven.
An eggless, milkless, butterless cake of the type that kept appearing whenever eggs and butter were dear. The book gives ingredients and a baking time and assumes you know the rest.
- The missing methodThe book gives no method at all. Cakes of this family are often made by the boiled method: combine sugar, lard, salt, spices, currants and water in a saucepan, bring to a boil, simmer a few minutes, then cool completely before stirring in the flour and soda. Adding flour to still-hot syrup risks a heavy, greasy crumb.
- Moderate ovenNo temperature is given; "moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F. A shallower pan will be done sooner than the stated 50 minutes. Test with a skewer, as the dark sugar hides the usual colour cues.
- Half a pound of lardOne cup, or about 225g. Modern shelf-stable lard is fine; leaf lard or shortening behave the same way here. Butter can be substituted by weight, though the cake loses the particular short, slightly waxy crumb the original has.
- Soda with no acidOne teaspoon of soda for three and a half cups of flour is about the usual proportion, and the only acidity in the batter is whatever remains in the brown sugar. Use a dark, unrefined brown sugar rather than a pale refined one, or the cake can carry a soapy, metallic note.
- Five Roses flourA hard Canadian spring wheat flour, higher in protein than most all-purpose flour sold today. Ordinary bread flour is the closest match; with a softer all-purpose flour, hold back two or three tablespoons and judge the batter, which should be thick and dropping rather than pourable.
- CurrantsZante currants, the small dried grape, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in so they do not sink.
- Spice loadFour teaspoons of ground spice against three and a half cups of flour is assertive by current standards. Reduce the cloves first if you want it gentler.
- Yield and keepingThe batter is bulky, enough for a large cake or two loaves. Like most boiled fruit cakes it is usually better after a day wrapped tightly, and the fat and sugar help it keep.
"Poor man's cake" is a name often given to cakes built without the three expensive things a proper cake needed: eggs, butter and milk, though the naming tradition is loose and variable. Fat comes from lard, moisture from water, sweetness and colour from brown sugar, and interest from spice and dried fruit. Versions circulated long before the First World War, but the same formula reappeared under names like war cake and depression cake whenever rationing or hard times made eggs and butter scarce. Its place in the Five Roses Cook Book, a promotional collection issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, is telling: the book exists to sell flour, and a cake that leans this heavily on flour, sugar and spice rather than dairy was one many rural households could actually put together from the pantry.