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Currant Shortcake
Make a sweet shortcake, placing between layers and on top washed, mashed currants well sweetened, with a merringue, lightly browned.
A one-line recipe that assumes you already know how to make shortcake. The gaps worth filling are what "currants" means here, how much sugar mashed currants need, and how to keep the layers from turning to mush.
- Which currantsFresh red or white currants on the stem, not the dried Zante currants sold in the baking aisle. Strip them from the stems with a fork before washing; a pound of fruit is about 3 cups and is enough for a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake.
- Sweet shortcake means a biscuit doughIn American books of this period shortcake is a rich baking-powder biscuit dough, sugared, baked as two rounds or split after baking. It is not sponge and not the spongy store-bought cups. Bake it in a hot oven, 425F, for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Sugar the fruit generouslyRed currants are among the sharpest of the soft fruits, markedly more acidic than strawberries. Figure on a scant cup of sugar per pound of mashed fruit, stirred in and left to stand 20 minutes so it dissolves.
- Drain before you assembleMashed currants throw a great deal of juice, which is why sugared fruit sits so badly on biscuit. Pour off the loose juice and spoon it over the plated slices instead, or the bottom layer will collapse.
- The meringueTwo egg whites beaten stiff with 4 tablespoons of sugar covers the top. Spread it so it touches the edge of the cake all round, which helps stop it shrinking back as it cools.
- Browning it"Lightly browned" means a short spell in a hot oven, 400 to 425F for 5 minutes, or a few minutes under a broiler with the door watched. A soft meringue browned this quickly is barely set; use pasteurised whites if that matters to you.
- Serve the day it is madeServes six to eight. Currant juice and meringue both go slack overnight, and the biscuit stales fast, so this is not a cake to hold.
Currants were a fixture of nineteenth-century American kitchen gardens long before they were a rarity in shops: the bushes are hardy, crop heavily and need little attention, and household books of the era often assume a surplus to be dealt with in July. Their near-disappearance from the market is usually traced to the early twentieth-century state bans on Ribes planting, imposed because the bushes host white pine blister rust, a disease of commercial timber; the federal restriction was lifted in the 1960s but several states kept their own for decades, and a generation of cooks grew up without the fruit. The shortcake treatment here is the standard American one applied to whatever berry was ripe, with the meringue serving the same purpose as whipped cream.