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To make a rich plum cake
Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice, and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon.
Melt the butter to cream, and put in the sugar, stir it till quite light, adding the allspice, and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour take the yolks of the eggs, and work them in, two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow quite ready to work in; as the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the white gradually: then add the orange peel, lemon and citron, cut in fine stripes, and the currants, which must be mixed in well, with the sweet almonds. Then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop in a hot oven for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.
This is a full-sized British rich fruit cake, close to eight pounds of batter, leavened entirely by beaten egg white. Two things decide whether it works: the butter must never actually liquefy, and the oven must be far cooler than the word "hot" suggests for a cake this deep.
- "Melt the butter to cream""Melt the butter to cream" most likely means working softened butter to a smooth cream rather than melting it over heat, since liquid butter will not hold air. The later warning that the paste must not stand and chill the butter points the same way on speed but against chilling: keep the butter and the mixture warm enough to stay soft and workable throughout.
- Oven temperatureIgnore "hot oven" here. A cake of this size and sugar content needs 300-325F for roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours; at anything approaching 400F the outside will be black before the centre sets. The twelve sheets of paper underneath are period insulation against a brick oven's fierce floor.
- The paperSubstitute a double layer of parchment lining the tin, a parchment collar standing an inch above the rim, and two or three folded sheets of newspaper or a doubled baking sheet under the pan. The point is to slow heat reaching the base and sides.
- SweetmeatsNot confectionery. The instruction later names them: candied orange peel, lemon peel and citron, cut in fine strips. One pound total of mixed candied peel.
- Currants and almondsZante currants, the small dried grape, not fresh redcurrants. Two pounds is correct and they should be rinsed and dried if dusty. "Sweet almonds" simply distinguishes them from bitter almonds; use two ounces of blanched almonds, chopped or pounded.
- Spice and brandy quantitiesA quarter ounce of ground allspice is roughly a tablespoon; a quarter ounce of cinnamon is about the same by volume, if anything a shade less. A period wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz of brandy.
- Eggs and saltTen eggs of the period run smaller than modern large eggs; nine large eggs is a fair equivalent. There is no salt and no chemical leavening, which is normal for this style; a half teaspoon of salt does no harm.
- Pan and donenessA "tin hoop" is a bottomless ring set on a papered sheet. Use a deep 10-inch round pan or two 8-inch pans. It is done when a skewer comes out clean and the cake has stopped hissing; cool completely in the tin.
- Yield and keepingAbout 8 pounds of cake, 40 or more thin slices. Wrapped in parchment and foil it improves for weeks, and a spoonful of brandy brushed over the top every few days is the traditional treatment.
There are hardly any plums in it, and by this date generally none: from the seventeenth century onward "plum" in English cookery meant raisins and dried fruit generally, so plum cake, plum pudding and plum porridge all take their name from the currants and raisins that carried the sweetness before cheap sugar, though earlier plum pottages and porridges did sometimes include prunes, that is, dried plums. A cake like this one, weighed out in even pounds of butter, sugar and flour against two pounds of fruit, is the direct ancestor of the British wedding and Christmas cake. The tin hoop and the twelve sheets of paper date it to the era of the brick bread oven, when a cook had no dial and managed heat by insulation and by choosing her moment as the oven fell. Recipes at this scale also suggest something about the household: a cake needing ten eggs, a pound of candied peel and three hours of oven time was presumably made for a christening, a wedding or Twelfth Night, not for a Tuesday.