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Fruit Cake with Spices
1 pound butter. 1 pound sugar. 1 pound flour. 1 dozen eggs. Mix as for pound cake. Add 1 pound almonds. 1 pound raisins. 1/4 pound citron. 1 ounce mace. 1 ounce cloves. 1 ounce allspice.--Mrs. A. C.
A pound-cake batter carrying its own weight in fruit and nuts, written for a cook who already knew the pound-cake method by heart. Two things need attention: the spice quantities and the oven.
- The spices are the hingeThree ounces of ground spice — roughly 3/4 cup total — in a batter of this size will taste medicinal to a modern palate. Cutting it to about a tablespoon each brings it into line with modern taste.
- "Mix as for pound cake"There is no leavening here, so the rise comes entirely from air. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, beat the yolks in one at a time, fold in the flour, then fold in whites beaten to soft peaks. Eggs of the period ran smaller than modern large ones, so about 10 large eggs is a reasonable stand-in for the dozen called for.
- OvenA cake this dense wants 275–300F, not the 350F of a plain cake. Expect 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours depending on pan depth; a skewer should come out clean and the top should feel firm rather than springy.
- Pan and yieldThe batter runs to something closer to 6 1/2–7 lb. Use a 10-inch tube pan or two 9x5-inch loaf pans, lined with two layers of parchment, filled no more than three-quarters. It slices thin and serves 25 or more.
- AlmondsBlanch and slice or coarsely chop them; whole almonds tear the crumb when you cut it. Toasting them first is not in the original but improves the flavor considerably.
- CitronStill sold as candied citron peel, though often only around the winter holidays. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes without complaint. Rinse and chop the fruit, then toss it with a spoonful of the measured flour so it stays suspended.
- KeepingUniced, wrapped in parchment and then foil, this improves for weeks. A cloth dampened with brandy or wine, renewed every few days, was a common treatment for cakes of this kind and both flavors and preserves it.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered contributions from some 250 Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many recipes end in initials rather than names — Mrs. A. C. would have been recognizable to her neighbors and to nobody else. The underlying formula is the English pound cake, equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, a proportion recorded by the early 18th century. Cakes like this were made in autumn for Christmas and fed with spirits through the intervening weeks, a practice generally traced to the older British tradition of rich fruit cakes for weddings and Twelfth Night.