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Currant Cake
6 ozs. (6 heaping tablespoonfuls) cleaned currants I lb. (4 cups) flour 4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) sugar 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 4 eggs 1/2 cupful chopped nuts 1/2 lb. (1 cup) butter 1 teaspoonful lemon extract Pinch of salt Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, then add the eggs one by one. Mix thoroughly, then sift in the flour, salt, and baking powder, then add the currants, nuts, and lemon extract, and mix gently.
Pour into a buttered and floured earthenware dish and bake in a moderate oven for one hour.
A plain English fruit cake baked in earthenware rather than a tin. Two things need attention before you start: what "currants" means here, and the fact that the batter carries no liquid at all.
- Currants are dried, not freshThese are Zante currants — small dried grapes, sold near the raisins. Fresh red or black currants would ruin the batter. "Cleaned" means picked over for stems and grit, then rinsed and dried.
- The tablespoon equivalents do not holdSix heaping tablespoons of currants is nowhere near 6 oz, and 4 heaping tablespoons of sugar is well short of 4 oz. Work from the weights: 170 g currants, 115 g sugar, 450 g flour, 225 g butter.
- A moderate oven350°F / 175°C. One hour at that heat in earthenware is about right for a deep cake, but start testing at 50 minutes with a skewer.
- The batter will be very stiffA pound of flour against four eggs and no milk gives something closer to a dough than a batter — this is why the original says "pour" and you will find you cannot. Adding 1/2 to 3/4 cup of milk, a little at a time, until the mixture drops heavily from the spoon, will bring it to a pourable consistency.
- Sugar is low by modern tasteFour ounces of sugar to a pound of flour makes a distinctly plain, teabread-like cake, which is what a currant cake was meant to be. Increase it if you want something closer to a modern pound cake, but expect a softer crumb.
- Earthenware behaves differently from metalIt heats slowly and holds heat, so the cake browns late and keeps cooking after it comes out. Butter and flour it thoroughly, put it into an oven that is already at temperature, and never set a hot earthenware dish on a cold wet surface.
- Lemon extractA teaspoon of extract reads strong to modern palates. Half a teaspoon, or the grated zest of one lemon, gives a gentler flavour.
- YieldEnough for a 2-quart casserole or a deep 8-inch dish; twelve to sixteen slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second.
Currant cake is one of the oldest fixtures of the English domestic baking repertoire — a butter cake stiffened with flour and studded with dried fruit, made for tea rather than for occasions, and cheaper than a raisin or citron cake because currants were among the less expensive of the imported dried fruits. Its appearance in a book devoted to casserole dishes reflects a specific moment in American cooking: glazed earthenware and fireproof china were being marketed hard as modern equipment, and cookery writers set about proving that the new vessels could do everything a tin or a spider could. Baking a cake in one was part of that argument. The result also explains the recipe's oddities — the mixture is deliberately dense and low in sugar, the kind of batter that tolerates the slow, even heat of an earthen dish better than a light sponge would.