Black Cake
1 1/4 pounds butter. 1 1/2 pounds sugar. 1 1/2 dozen eggs. 2 pounds stoned raisins. 2 pounds picked and washed currants. 1 pound sliced citron. 2 tablespoonfuls pulverized cloves. 2 tablespoonfuls nutmeg. 2 tablespoonfuls mace. 2 tablespoonfuls cinnamon. 1 tablespoonful powdered ginger. 1 tablespoonful salt. 2 wineglasses of brandy.--Mrs. D. Black Cake. 1 1/2 pounds flour. 1 1/2 pounds butter. 1 1/2 pounds sugar. 1 pound citron. 2 pounds beaten raisins 2 pounds sweet raisins, well cut. 2 pounds currants. The juice and rind of two lemons and two oranges, one tea-spoonful of soda; after the beaten fruit is well beaten, add the cut fruit. The citron or orange peel should never be rubbed in flour.--Mrs. P.
Black Cake.
Yolks of 24 eggs. 1 pound butter. 1 pound sugar. Take out a gill of the sugar, and in place put one gill of molasses, one pound flour; out of it take six tablespoonfuls, and in place put five spoonfuls of seconds, and one of corn meal. 4 pounds seedless raisins. 1/3 pound citron. 1/2 pound currants. 1/2 pound almonds and palm nuts. 2 ounces grated cocoanut. 2 ounces fine chocolate. 1 tablespoonful finely ground coffee. 1 tablespoonful allspice, mace, and cloves. 1 tablespoonful vanilla. 1 gill blackberry wine, or brandy. 1 teaspoonful soda. 2 teaspoonfuls cream tartar.
Bake the mass six hours very moderately.--Mrs. J.
Three separate black cakes are run together here, each contributed by a different woman and each assuming a cook who already knew how fruitcake was built. Read them as ingredient lists with a few notes attached rather than as procedures.
- The first recipe has no flourMrs. D.'s list gives butter, sugar, eggs, fruit, spice and brandy but no flour at all, whether dropped in printing or assumed from a neighbouring receipt. A cake on this scale would want roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb flour to match the butter and sugar, but the original as printed cannot be followed.
- Gills and wineglassesA gill is 1/2 cup, 4 fluid ounces. A wineglass in nineteenth-century American receipts is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, so Mrs. D.'s two wineglasses of brandy come to about 1/2 cup.
- "Seconds" and corn mealSeconds is the coarser, darker flour from a later pass of the mill — closer to a light whole wheat than to modern white flour. Mrs. J. swaps six tablespoons of white flour for five of seconds and one of corn meal, which would coarsen the crumb slightly; her reason is not stated.
- Beaten fruit"Beaten raisins" is generally taken to mean raisins pounded to a paste in a mortar; the "cut" raisins are added afterward, as Mrs. P. directs, so some fruit stays whole. A food processor pulsed short of a purée does the same work.
- Flouring the fruitMrs. P. directs that citron and orange peel should never be rubbed in flour. The usual reasoning is that candied peel is wet with syrup, so flour turns to paste on it; drier fruit is what tends to be dusted to keep it suspended.
- Spice quantitiesTwo tablespoons each of cloves, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon plus a tablespoon of ginger is heavy even for a nine- or ten-pound cake. Halving the total is reasonable with modern jars.
- LeaveningSoda alone, as in Mrs. P.'s version, relies on the acid in the lemon and orange juice. Mrs. J.'s teaspoon of soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder — one part soda to two of cream of tartar is a proportion commonly given in receipts of the period.
- Palm nutsAn unsettled term in period cookbooks; what Mrs. J. meant by it is not certain. Brazil nuts are a reasonable modern stand-in.
- Oven and time"Six hours very moderately" points to a slow oven, roughly 275 to 300F by modern reckoning, in a deep pan lined with buttered paper and, if the top colours early, covered loosely. Test with a skewer rather than the clock; a cake this wet reads done only when the skewer comes out clean and dry.
- YieldEach of these works out to roughly ten pounds of cake or more — one very large pan or two loaf pans plus a smaller one. Wrapped in brandy-dampened cloth and kept cool, it improves for weeks.
Black cake is the American descendant of British plum cake: butter, sugar and eggs weighed in pounds, carrying several times their weight in dried fruit, darkened with spice and long slow baking. It was the cake of Christmas and of weddings, made well ahead because it kept, and its expense — citron, mace, imported currants, two dozen eggs — was part of the point. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, some of whom are credited only by initial, prints three versions in a row because each cook had her own; that duplication is characteristic of the book, which reads as a collection of household copybooks rather than a single authored text. The same tradition carried into the Caribbean, where black cake is still soaked in rum and burnt sugar, and Mrs. J.'s additions of molasses, chocolate, coconut and ground coffee show a cook reaching for extra darkness by any means available.