“There was the long table laid out again, with a regular sit-down meal; cream cheese, and cake, and blackberries, and a big plate of honey; some curious kind of smoked meat cut very thin, and the potatoes which I'd smelled frying.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1/2 cupful of butter. 2/3 cupful of sugar. 1 generous cupful of flour. 2/3 cupful of stoned raisins. 2/3 cupful of blackberry jam. 2 tablespoonfuls of sour cream or milk. 1/2 teaspoonful of soda. 1/2 of a nutmeg, grated. 2 eggs. Beat the butter to a cream, then beat in the sugar. When very light, beat in the jam and nutmeg. Dissolve the soda in one tablespoonful of cold water, and add it to the sour cream. Add this and the egg, well beaten, to the other ingredients. Now add the flour, and beat for half a minute. Sprinkle a tablespoonful of flour over the raisins, and stir them in lightly. Pour the batter into a well buttered pan, and bake for fifty minutes. This makes one small loaf. This cake may be put away to be used as a pudding when convenient. Steam it for one hour, and serve with a wine sauce. It is almost as good as a plum pudding.
Sources: The passage is from C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson, Lady Betty Across the Water, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, beehive stamp.