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Nut Spice Cake
1/2 cup butter 1 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup molasses Yolks 4 eggs 1 cup sour milk 2 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon clove 1/4 nutmeg, grated 1 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces 1/2 cup currants 1/2 cup English walnut meats, cut in pieces 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder Mix ingredients in the order given. This recipe makes two loaves.
A butter-and-molasses loaf cake leavened twice over, with soda working against sour milk and baking powder as insurance. The original gives neither oven heat nor baking time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. Two loaves in standard 8x4-inch pans, greased and lined, take roughly 45 to 55 minutes; a skewer should come out clean and the loaf should have begun to pull from the sides.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which is not the same as spoiled pasteurised milk. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup; its acid is what activates the soda.
- "1/4 nutmeg"A quarter of a whole nutmeg, grated, not a quarter teaspoon of ground. It works out to something near half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg.
- The four yolksOnly yolks go in, which is what gives the crumb its richness and close texture. The whites keep for a day or two covered in the refrigerator, or go into meringue or an omelette.
- "Mix in the order given"Read as a method, this suggests creaming butter and brown sugar, beating in molasses and yolks, then the sour milk and the flour with the spices and soda, folding in fruit and nuts last. Note that the original lists the baking powder last of all, after the nuts, though sifting it with the flour is the usual modern handling. Combine the batter without long delay once the soda meets the sour milk, or some of the lift is lost.
- Flouring the fruitToss the raisins, currants and walnuts with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in. In a batter this loose they otherwise settle to the bottom of the pan.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter than the table molasses of the period.
- Yield and keepingTwo loaves, each cutting into ten or twelve slices. Spice cakes of this type improve on the second day; wrap well once cool.
The soda-and-sour-milk pairing is the older American leavening, in kitchen use from the earlier nineteenth century when saleratus was a household staple and a dairying family generally had milk turning; the added baking powder here may show the transition in progress, a cook hedging with the newer commercial product while keeping the method she trusted. The specification of "English walnut" is worth noting too, distinguishing the imported thin-shelled nut from the native black walnut that many American cooks gathered themselves and that tastes considerably stronger.