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Dark Fruit Cake
1/2 cup butter 3/4 cup brown sugar 3/4 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces 3/4 cup currants 1/2 cup citron, thinly sliced and cut in strips 1/2 cup molasses 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon mace 1/4 teaspoon clove 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract Follow directions for mixing butter cake mixtures. Bake in deep cake pans one and one-quarter hours.
A modest, everyday fruit cake — no brandy, no soaking, no long curing — built on the standard creamed butter-cake method the book explains elsewhere. The main thing to get right is a low oven and a well-lined pan.
- "Butter cake mixtures" means creamingCream the butter and brown sugar until light, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the molasses, and add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Flour the cut fruit lightly with a little of the measured flour before folding it in, or it settles to the bottom.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; a fruit-heavy batter with molasses scorches easily, so a slow to moderate oven, in the region of 300-325F, suits the stated hour and a quarter in a deep pan. Hotter than that and the outside will darken before the centre sets.
- Pan and lining"Deep cake pans" is not specified further; a deep loaf or small tube pan answers the description. Grease and line with parchment. The quantity should fill roughly one 9x5 loaf, or two smaller pans.
- MolassesUse light or full-flavor unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the cooking molasses of the period.
- Currants and citronCurrants are dried Zante grapes, not fresh red currants; supermarket dried currants are the same thing. Candied citron is still sold at holiday time, and candied orange or lemon peel substitutes cleanly.
- Seeding raisinsRaisins came with seeds then. Any modern seedless raisin needs only to be halved if large, or left whole.
- MaceMace is the aril of the nutmeg and tastes lighter and more floral than nutmeg itself. Ground nutmeg is the nearest substitute, used in the same or slightly smaller quantity.
- Testing and keepingA skewer should come out clean and the loaf pull slightly from the sides. Cool in the pan, then wrap well; this keeps a week at room temperature and improves after a day or two.
Cookbooks of this period commonly distinguished the "dark" fruit cake from the "light" or white one: dark tended to mean brown sugar or molasses, warm spices, raisins and currants; light meant white sugar and paler fruit and nuts. This is the plainer member of the family -- no wine, no fruit steeped for weeks, no pound of butter -- the sort of loaf a household kept in a tin and sliced for tea. The bare instruction to "follow directions for mixing butter cake mixtures" reflects how domestic-science teaching of the era organized instruction: cakes were taught as variations on a handful of standard mixtures, and a student who had learned the creamed butter-cake method was expected to carry it into any recipe that said no more than that. Candied citron was imported and comparatively expensive, and functions here as the one touch of luxury.