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Boiled Raisin Cake
Mrs. C. I. Casey. 1/2 pkg. seeded raisins ¾ C sugar 1/3 C lard 1 egg 1 C water from boiled raisins 1 t soda in water 1 t cinnamon .1 t lemon extract 2 C flour 1/2 C nutmeats Wash raisins, cover with water and boil for twenty minutes. Remove from fire to cool. Mix sugar, lard, egg, water from raisins, soda, cinnamon lemon extract, flour and nutmeats. (Roll raisins and nuts in flour before adding to mixture.) Bake in slow oven about one hour. Cover with powedered sugar icing. 1 C cold water 1 C sugar 1 C seeded raisins 2 T lard
A boiled-raisin cake of the plain, eggs-and-fat-are-scarce kind: the raisins are simmered first, and their cooking liquid carries the soda into the batter. It bakes low and slow, more like a loaf than a layer cake.
- Slow ovenA slow oven is 300-325F. An hour at that heat suits a single loaf or an 8-inch square pan; test with a skewer at 50 minutes.
- The raisin water is the hingeLet the raisin liquid cool before you stir the soda into it and add it to the batter. Hot liquid will spend the soda's lift before the cake reaches the oven, and it will scramble the egg. Make up any shortfall with plain water so you have a full cup.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar measure has lost its fraction in the original printing. Three-quarters of a cup is the proportion these boiled raisin cakes normally take against 2 cups flour, and it works.
- LardOne-third cup lard gives a tender, slightly savoury crumb. Butter or shortening substitutes cup for cup, though butter browns the crust faster at this low temperature.
- Half a package of raisinsSeeded-raisin packages of this era commonly ran somewhere near a pound, so figure roughly 6-8 oz, about 1 to 1 1/4 cups. Seeded raisins were usually muscats with the seeds removed; ordinary seedless raisins are the modern stand-in and need no washing.
- No salt, no baking powderThe recipe relies entirely on the teaspoon of soda dissolved in the raisin liquid. Expect a dense, close crumb. A quarter teaspoon of salt in the flour is worth adding for flavour.
- Flouring the fruitTossing raisins and nutmeats in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in keeps them suspended rather than sunk. Take that flour from the 2 cups rather than adding extra.
- Icing and yieldPowdered sugar icing here means confectioners' sugar slaked with a little water or milk to a spreadable paste, poured over the cooled cake. One loaf, about 10 slices.
Boiled raisin cake belongs to a family of thrifty American cakes built on fruit and its cooking water rather than on quantities of butter, milk and eggs. The same formula reappears through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and became widespread again during the First World War, when it circulated under names like war cake and eggless-milkless-butterless cake; this version keeps one egg and uses lard. Boiled raisin cake was exactly the sort of dependable keeper a contributor would put her name to: it holds several days and slices without crumbling, sliced and buttered at tea.