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Raisin Cake
1 t soda 1t cinnamon 1 t cloves 1 Chot water Bake in layers. Put together with raisin filling. Ice with boiled frosting to which raisins have been added.
Mrs. Kruckman.
What survives here is the spice-and-leavening end of a spiced layer cake, plus the assembly: bake in layers, fill with raisin filling, ice with boiled frosting studded with raisins. The notes below cover the parts that are legible and the conventions a cook of the period would have taken for granted.
- The abbreviations"t" is a teaspoon and "C" a cup of eight fluid ounces. Soda is bicarbonate of soda, sold today as baking soda; some older recipe books call the same thing saleratus.
- Soda with hot waterHot water was a common carrier for soda in spice cakes, dissolving it and moistening the cinnamon and cloves. The fragment does not show what the soda was meant to react with, but batters of this kind were generally got into the pans promptly once the soda was added.
- Layer pans"Layers" in a book of this kind generally means two or three round tins of 8 or 9 inches, greased and floured or lined with paper. The surviving fragment does not give enough of the batter to judge how many pans it would fill.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A spiced layer cake would today be baked in a moderate oven, around 350F, until the centre springs back; timing will depend on the pan and the full batter, which does not survive here.
- Raisin fillingNo filling recipe is given. A common version was raisins chopped and cooked down with sugar, a little water or fruit juice and a spoonful of flour or cornstarch until thick, then cooled completely before spreading, since warm filling will slide the layers apart.
- Boiled frostingThis is the poured-syrup meringue: sugar syrup taken to the soft-ball stage, about 238 to 240F, beaten in a thin stream into stiff egg whites. Fold the raisins in at the very end, off the beater, or the whites deflate.
- YieldNot stated; the fragment gives no flour, sugar or egg quantities from which to judge it. Boiled frosting is generally best kept covered at room temperature, as it weeps if refrigerated.
Raisin layer cakes were a fixture of community cookbooks, which were compiled from recipes passed between contributors. Raisins were a cheap, shelf-stable fruit of the American pantry, much of it shipped from California, and a cook who wanted a cake that looked like an occasion without costing like one could reach for raisins, cinnamon and cloves. A spiced layer with a cooked raisin filling and boiled frosting is a construction that keeps, slices cleanly and travels. The attribution to Mrs. Kruckman is characteristic of the type, in which the contributors' names are as much of the point as the recipes.