Fruit Cake
2 pounds best stoned raisins. 2 pounds currants. 1 pound citron. 12 eggs. 1 pound fresh butter. 1 pound loaf sugar. 1 pound flour. Make the batter as you would for nice cake, and before adding the fruit, stir into the batter.-- 4 1/2 teaspoonfuls cream of tartar. 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls soda. 1 large tablespoonful of ground cinnamon. 1 small tablespoonful of white ginger. 4 1/2 nutmegs. 1 tablespoonful of best molasses.
Add by degrees the fruit and one-half teacup best brandy; bake slowly five hours. Excellent, and will keep good six months.--Mrs. F. Fruit Cake. 18 eggs. 1 1/2 pounds flour. 1 1/2 pounds sugar. 1 1/2 pounds butter. 2 pounds raisins. 2 pounds currants, washed and picked. 1 1/2 pounds citron. 2 nutmegs. 2 pounds almonds, weighed in shell. 2 tablespoonfuls cinnamon. 2 tablespoonfuls mace. 1 small teaspoonful clove. 1 small teaspoonful salt. 2 teaspoonfuls ginger. 2 wine-glasses of wine. 1 wine-glass of brandy. 1 teaspoonfuls cream of tartar, in a cup of milk.
Let it rise about three hours, then bake slowly, and let it stand a good while after it is baked, in the oven.--Mrs. C. B.
Fruit Cake. 2 1/2 pounds butter. 2 1/2 pounds flour. 25 eggs. 2 1/2 pounds sugar. 3 pounds citron. 5 pounds currants. 5 pounds raisins. A large spoonful cinnamon. 1 spoonful mace. 4 nutmegs. A glass wine. A glass brandy. This will make a very large cake.--Mrs. A. P.
Fruit Cake. 1 1/2 pound risen dough. 10 eggs. 2 cups butter. 4 cups sugar. 1 cup milk. 1 cup wine, or brandy. 1 light teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful lemon extract. 1/2 teaspoonful cloves.
Beat these ingredients together and add one pound of stoned raisins, one pound of citron dredged in flour.
If very soft for cake, add a little flour.--Mrs. J. W.
Four versions from four contributors, ranging from a manageable holiday cake to Mrs. A. P.'s 25-egg monster. All of them assume a cook who knows the pound-cake method and an oven held low for hours.
- Scale firstMrs. F.'s recipe is the only one a home baker should start with: it comes to roughly 9 lb of batter and fruit, enough for two 9-inch tube pans or three loaf pans. Mrs. A. P.'s totals over 20 lb; the recipe says only that it "will make a very large cake."
- "Bake slowly"The book gives no temperature; a low oven, in the region of 275-300F, is the usual modern reading. Five hours at that temperature is not an exaggeration for a deep cake; test with a skewer at the center rather than trusting the clock. Mrs. C. B.'s instruction to leave it in the oven afterward is a sound way to finish the center without scorching the crust.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone, broken and pounded before use. Granulated sugar by weight is the direct substitute; if you want the finer crumb the original produced, pulse it briefly to something between granulated and caster.
- Wine-glass and teacupA wine-glass in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. Teacups varied; the "half teacup" of brandy in the first recipe works out at somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Neither is precise, and neither needs to be.
- NutmegsOne whole nutmeg grates to about 2 to 3 teaspoons. Four and a half nutmegs is therefore 3 to 4 tablespoons in a single cake, which reads as a great deal to a modern palate accustomed to pre-ground spice; halving the nutmeg and mace in any of these is defensible.
- Almonds weighed in shellMrs. C. B.'s 2 pounds in the shell yields roughly 1 lb of kernels. Buy blanched almonds by weight and use that figure.
- Currants and citronCurrants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Citron is candied citron peel, sold in blocks and best chopped by hand; dredging the fruit in flour, as the last recipe directs, keeps it from sinking through the batter.
- Cream of tartar and sodaMrs. F.'s 4 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar to 1 1/2 teaspoons soda is a 3:1 ratio, heavier in cream of tartar than the 2:1 usually given for homemade baking powder, and is added to the batter before the fruit so it disperses. Mrs. C. B.'s cream of tartar in milk with no soda and a three-hour rise suggests she was leaning on yeast or on the eggs; the instruction as printed is incomplete.
- The yeast-raised versionMrs. J. W.'s cake starts from 1 1/2 lb of risen bread dough, a shortcut available in any kitchen where bread was made regularly. Use a lean white bread dough after its first rise, and expect a chewier crumb than the others.
- KeepingSix months is realistic for the brandy-heavy versions. Wrap the cooled cake in cheesecloth moistened with brandy, then in foil or parchment, and refresh the cloth every few weeks in a cool cupboard.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, prints recipes as its correspondents sent them, which is why four fruit cakes sit here side by side with no attempt to reconcile them. Most of them work from equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and eggs -- the pound-cake formula -- then a great deal more weight again in dried fruit, held together by spice and spirits. Cakes of this kind were the great occasional bakes of the 19th-century South, made for Christmas, weddings and christenings, and their keeping quality was a practical virtue rather than a boast: sugar, candied peel and brandy all preserve, and a cake wrapped in a spirit-soaked cloth could be started well in advance of the event it was meant for. The fourth version, built on a piece of the day's bread dough, departs from the pound-cake pattern altogether -- it weighs no flour and keeps no equal measures -- and preserves the older technique that fruit cake descends from: the enriched, spiced yeast breads of English and northern European baking. By the time this book went to press, saleratus, cream of tartar and commercial baking powders were well established, as these very recipes show.