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Ten Eggs
One teaspoonful of Salt.
One ounce of Allspice. like Cream the butter and sugar well together, then sift in the flour and salt gradually, add the eggs one at a time, beating with your hand till all is well and smoothly mixed. Chop the cherries a little, chop the peel and the almonds, add these with the sultanas and the allspice, mix well together, and add last of all the brandy, a little at a time. Be sure that all is thoroughly mixed. Line a caketin with buttered paper, putting three rounds of buttered paper at the bottom, and bake for three hours in a moderate oven. The heat of the oven must not rise after the cake goes in.
This page has come down to us in a mangled state: the printed ingredient list has been cut off after the salt and allspice, so the only quantities we have are the ten eggs of the title, a teaspoonful of salt and an ounce of allspice. Read it as a method for a rich brandied fruit cake rather than a set of proportions you can shop from.
- The list is incompleteButter, sugar, flour, cherries, candied peel, almonds, sultanas and brandy are all called for in the method but their weights are missing. A ten-egg fruit cake of this type conventionally runs on roughly a pound each of butter, sugar and flour, but that is inference, not what the book says. Use a modern rich fruit cake formula for the amounts and this page for the technique.
- An ounce of allspiceThat is roughly four to five tablespoons of ground allspice, a very heavy hand even for a large Victorian cake. Scale it against whatever total batter weight you settle on; a teaspoon or two per pound of flour is nearer current taste.
- Moderate oven, and no rising'Moderate' is usually read today as somewhere around 325-350F, though period usage varies; for a fruit cake baked three hours the lower end is safer. The instruction that the heat must not rise after the cake goes in matters most: a cake this dense and sugary tends to scorch at the edges before the centre sets, so bring the oven to temperature, load it, and if anything let it fall slightly.
- Three rounds of paperThe triple layer of buttered paper in the base most likely served as insulation as well as release, though the book does not say. A modern equivalent: a double band of parchment round the sides standing an inch above the rim, three discs in the bottom, and the outside of the tin wrapped in brown paper or newspaper tied with string.
- Beating with your handBeating heavy batters by hand was common practice, and the hand gave a direct reading of when the mixture had come together smoothly. A stand mixer on low with the paddle does the same work, but add the eggs one at a time as directed and let each disappear before the next, or the mixture may curdle and the fruit sink.
- Flour the fruitThe chopped cherries, peel, almonds and sultanas go in after the flour, which is correct. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour first so they stay suspended through a three-hour bake.
- Brandy last, and slowlyAlcohol tipped in all at once can make the mixture separate. Trickle it in as the book says, a little at a time, with the mixer running or the hand working.
- Doneness and keepingThree hours is a guide; test with a skewer, which should come out clean, and expect a further half hour if your tin is deep. Cool in the tin, then wrap in the paper and keep in a tin for a week or more before cutting. Yield depends on the weights you settle on, since the book's quantities are lost.
The pattern here is the standard British rich fruit cake, the one that served as wedding, christening and Christmas cake alike through the nineteenth century, and the ten eggs of the title suggest a household that could spend eggs by the dozen and brandy by the glass, with a cook free to watch a steady oven for three hours. The generous spicing and the candied peel, cherries and sultanas are generally traced to the earlier tradition of enriching bread doughs with dried fruit and imported spice, which gave way to butter-and-egg batter cakes as beaten eggs and, from the mid-nineteenth century, chemical raising agents made the yeast unnecessary. Whatever the usual layout of the book, the loss of the ingredient column at the top of this page leaves the instructions intact and the cake unbuildable as written.