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White Fruit Cake
1 pound sugar. 1 pound flour. 1 pound butter. 1 pound blanched almonds. 3 pounds citron. 1 cocoanut. Whites of 16 eggs.--Mrs. Dr. J. White Fruit Cake. 1 pound pulverized sugar. 3/4 pound butter. Whites of 12 eggs, beaten very light. 1 pound flour. 2 grated cocoanuts. 2 pounds citron, cut in small pieces. 2 pounds blanched almonds, cut in thin slices. Bake slowly. White Fruit Cake.
Whites of 16 eggs, beaten well. 8 ounces butter. 1 pound flour. 1 pound sugar. 1 teacup citron. 1 cup almonds. 3 cups grated cocoanut. The citron and almonds to be cut and blanched, of course. White Fruit Cake [superior, tried recipe]. 1 pound white sugar. 1 pound flour. 1/2 pound butter. Whites of 12 eggs. 2 pounds citron, cut in thin, long strips. 2 pounds almonds, blanched and cut in strips. 1 large cocoanut, grated.
Before the flour is sifted, add to it one teaspoonful of soda, two teaspoonfuls cream tartar. Cream the butter as you do for pound cake, add the sugar, and beat it awhile; then add the whites of eggs, and flour; and after beating the batter sufficiently, add about one-third of the fruit, reserving the rest to add in layers, as you put the batter in the cake-mould. Bake slowly and carefully, as you do other fruit cake.--Mrs. W.
Four contributed versions of the same cake, printed one after another; the last, marked as a tried recipe, is the only one with leavening and the only one with any real method. Work from that one and treat the others as evidence of how much the proportions varied from household to household.
- Scale firstA pound of flour, a pound of sugar and four to five pounds of fruit and nuts makes an enormous cake — roughly 8 to 9 pounds of batter. Expect two 9-inch tube pans or three loaf pans, and halve the recipe if you only want one cake.
- "Bake slowly"For a dense fruit cake this means 275-300F, not 350F. A full-size cake will need 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours; cover the top loosely with foil once it colors, and test with a skewer at the center.
- Pan preparationButter the pan and line it with two layers of parchment, with a collar standing an inch above the rim. At this baking time and this much sugar and fruit, an unlined pan will scorch the crust before the middle sets.
- CocoanutThe original means a fresh coconut, cracked and grated on a hand grater — moist, unsweetened, and about 3 to 4 cups per nut. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest substitute; soak it in a little warm milk or coconut milk first or it will draw moisture out of the batter.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the candied rind of the citron fruit, sold in jars or by the pound at holiday time. Two pounds is a very large amount by modern taste; a pound, or a mix of citron with candied orange peel, gives a cake most people will actually eat. The "teacup" in the third version is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup.
- Blanched almondsBuy whole skin-on almonds and blanch them yourself — 60 seconds in boiling water, then slip the skins — or start with blanched whole almonds and slice them thickly. Pre-sliced commercial almonds are too thin and disappear into the crumb.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two teaspoons cream of tartar sifted into the flour is the period equivalent of roughly four teaspoons of baking powder. It works, but mix and bake promptly, since the reaction begins as soon as the liquid egg white goes in.
- Egg whitesTwelve whites is roughly 1 1/2 cups; sixteen is about 2 cups. Beat them to soft, not stiff, peaks and fold them in — beaten dry, they break down under the weight of the fruit and leave streaks.
- Layering the fruitThe instruction to add only a third of the fruit to the batter and scatter the rest in layers as the mould is filled is the point of the recipe. Batter this stiff will not suspend five pounds of fruit; layering keeps it from sinking to the bottom.
- KeepingCool completely in the pan, then wrap in parchment and foil. Unlike a dark fruit cake it has no spirits or molasses to preserve it, so keep it no more than a week or two, refrigerated in warm weather.
White fruit cake is often said to have been the wedding cake of the nineteenth-century American South — the pale, almond-and-citron "bride's cake" traditionally set opposite the dark, spiced, brandied "groom's cake" on the same table, its whiteness the whole point. The absence of yolks, molasses, brown sugar and dark spices looks deliberate, and the coconut, citron and almonds seem to be there to supply richness without color. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia (compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, 1879) prints four versions in a row is characteristic of the book: it was assembled from recipes solicited from Virginia housewives, and the editor printed what she was sent rather than reconciling it, initials and all. The fourth is flagged as tried, which is as close as the book comes to an endorsement. The cost of the thing is worth noticing — several pounds of imported citron and almonds and a whole coconut, at a time when all three came by ship — which is why a cake like this belonged to weddings and Christmas and not to ordinary weeks.