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Pork Fruit Cake (Eggless)
1 pound solid fat pork (chopped very fine) Pour over this 1 pint boiling water, then add: 2 teaspoons baking soda 2 cups sugar 1 cup molasses 1 pound currants 1 pound seeded raisins ½ pound citron peel (cut fine) 1 cup chopped nuts glass brandy 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon ginger 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 grated nutmeg 4 cups (even) Five Roses flour.
A wartime-style fruit cake that replaces both butter and eggs with finely chopped pork fat, softened by boiling water. It works, but the original gives no pan, no temperature and no time, so the practical detail is all on the modern cook.
- The hinge: chop the pork fine and pour the water boilingThe boiling pint has to be hot enough to begin melting the fat so it disperses through the batter. Coarse pieces stay as chewy nubs in the finished cake; pieces about the size of a grain of rice, or a brief pulse in a food processor while very cold, are what is wanted.
- "Solid fat pork"This means fresh fatback or the white fat of salt pork, with no lean streaks. If all you can find is cured salt pork, blanch it in water for a few minutes and drain before chopping, or the cake will taste of brine.
- "Glass brandy"An old kitchen measure meaning a small wine or spirit glass. A wineglass was usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, though larger glasses would give up to twice that; anything in that range is fine.
- Soda, not powderTwo teaspoons of baking soda is the whole leavening, and it is doing its work against the acid in the molasses. Sift it with the flour or dissolve it in the hot pork mixture off the heat rather than dumping it in dry, or you will get soapy pockets.
- "4 cups (even)""Even" means level cups, not heaped. Measured this way against a pint of water plus molasses the batter is loose, closer to a thick pudding batter than a cake dough; the original assumes a cook who knows what fruit cake batter should look like.
- Fruit and panTwo and a half pounds of fruit and peel, plus the nuts, is a great deal of weight. Toss the fruit with a little of the measured flour first, and divide the batter between two greased and paper-lined loaf pans or one deep 9- to 10-inch round pan.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature. A slow oven, in the region of 300F, suits it: loaves take about 2 hours, a single deep cake 3 hours or more; test with a skewer in the centre. If the top colours too fast, tent it with paper.
- Yield and keepingA very large cake; the raw batter alone runs to something over 6 pounds. Wrapped tightly it improves after a week, and the brandy helps it keep for a month or two in a cool place.
Pork cake belongs to a long line of North American fruit cakes built on what a farm kitchen actually had rather than what a city grocer sold. Salt pork kept in the barrel year round, molasses was cheap, and dried fruit came in at Christmas, while eggs and butter were seasonal and often scarce in late winter; the fat pork supplies the shortening and the boiling water and soda do the work that eggs would otherwise do. Versions appear under names like pork cake and eggless fruit cake through the late nineteenth century, which is likely reason enough for the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to have kept one in the Five Roses book.