Fruit Cake
1 pound sugar (brown) 1 pound butter 12 eggs 1 pound flour teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon each nutmeg and mace 2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 cups raisins 4 cups currants 4 cups chopped almonds 4 cups chopped citron juice and rind of 1 lemon 1/4 cup brandy Cream butter; add sugar, eggs well beaten, and remaining ingredients. Pour into buttered and papered pans. Steam three hours and bake two hours. 4 cups flour 1 cup butter 14 cups sugar ½ cup milk 1 teaspoon salt
A pound-cake framework carrying roughly three times its own weight in fruit and nuts, cooked first by steam and then finished in a slow oven. It is a full day's project and produces an enormous quantity.
- The hinge: steam first, then bakeThe three hours of steaming set the batter gently, so the fruit-heavy mass can cook through without the outside scorching; the two hours of dry heat afterwards chiefly firm and dry the crust. Baking it straight through would risk a dark, dry outside before the centre is set.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the cook was expected to judge it, as was normal before thermostatic ovens. For the baking stage, a slow oven of about 275-300F suits it. Anything hotter risks darkening the fruit and the brown sugar before the middle is done.
- Pans, buttered and papered"Papered" means lining the tin with buttered paper - parchment now - which is not optional in a cake baked five hours. Line base and sides with a double thickness and leave a collar standing above the rim.
- Weights, not cups, for the baseA pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups packed brown; a pound of butter is 4 sticks; a pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups. Weighing is far more reliable here, since the flour is doing a great deal of structural work.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks; it is still available but usually in small tubs. Four cups is a lot of it, and many modern bakers substitute part mixed candied peel or candied orange.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Rinse and dry them, and pick over for stems before measuring.
- Steaming vesselYou need a covered kettle deep enough to hold the pans clear of the water on a rack, with a tight lid and enough water to last - check and top up with boiling water rather than cold.
- Yield and keepingThe full quantity comes to something close to ten pounds of cake, enough for two large loaf tins or one deep round pan plus a small one. Wrapped and kept in a tin, a cake this rich in fruit, sugar and spirit will hold for weeks and improves in the first fortnight.
- DonenessA skewer in the centre should come out clean and the cake should have pulled very slightly from the paper. Because there is so little flour relative to fruit, it will never feel springy.
Lowney's, a Boston chocolate firm, published its cook book to sell cocoa, but it carried a full complement of standard receipts, and the great spiced fruit cake was a fixture of that repertoire. The steam-then-bake method is often explained as a way of guaranteeing a gentle start with a covered kettle of boiling water, in an age when an even low heat for five hours was hard to trust; the same logic is said to survive in British steamed Christmas puddings. Cakes on this scale were made for weddings, christenings and Christmas, and the brandy served a double purpose - flavour, and preservation of a cake meant to be cut weeks or months after it was baked, along with the fruit and sugar.