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Cherry Cake
1/4 pound butter 1/4 pound bread crumbs 2 pounds black cherries 2 ounces almonds Cinnamon, cloves 2 ounces sugar 1/4 pint of milk Pick, and stone the cherries. Make the milk hot, and melt the butter in it. Blanch the almonds, and put them through a nut mill, and pound them well in a mortar. Now mix the almonds with the bread crumbs, sugar and a pinch each of cloves and cinnamon. Pour over the milk, and also melted butter, mix again carefully, and add the cherries. Bake in a shallow tin in a moderate oven for an hour. The cake should be about an inch and a half thick. Serve with whipped cream.
This is a crumb pudding rather than a cake in the modern sense: there is no flour, no egg and no leavening, so it sets into something dense and moist held together by breadcrumbs and ground almonds.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. An hour at that temperature is right for a shallow tin; the top should be set and lightly browned and the centre firm to a light press.
- The quarter pint of milkIf this is an imperial measure, a quarter pint is 5 fluid ounces, a scant 2/3 of a US cup (about 140 ml). Heat it just enough to melt the butter into it, no more.
- Weights in cups1/4 lb butter is one stick (8 tablespoons). 1/4 lb breadcrumbs is roughly 1 cup of fine dry crumbs, or about 2 cups if fresh and soft. 2 oz sugar is about 1/4 cup and 2 oz almonds a generous 1/3 cup whole.
- Breadcrumbs matterDry, fine crumbs give a firm slice; fresh soft crumbs give a looser, more pudding-like result and absorb the milk faster. Either works, but do not substitute panko, which stays gritty.
- AlmondsThe nut mill and mortar are simply a two-stage grind. Blanched almonds pulsed in a food processor, or 1/2 cup of commercial almond flour, does the same job.
- Two pounds of cherriesThat is the weight before stoning; expect about 1 3/4 lb of fruit and a good deal of juice. Drain the cherries briefly before folding them in or the mixture will be slack and the base soggy.
- The tinTo get the specified inch and a half of depth with this quantity, use an 8-inch square or 9-inch round tin, buttered and preferably lined on the base. Line it if you intend to turn the cake out; otherwise serve from the tin.
- SweetnessTwo ounces of sugar is very little by modern taste and assumes ripe, dark, sweet cherries. Taste the fruit first and add sugar if it is sharp.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Let it stand 15 minutes before cutting; it slices badly hot and is best warm rather than straight from the oven, with the whipped cream unsweetened.
Baked puddings built on breadcrumbs, ground almonds, butter and stone fruit run through German and Austrian home cooking as Kirschmichel, and this recipe's proportions, spicing with cloves and cinnamon, and use of black cherries are often said to point that way, though breadcrumb-and-almond baked puddings with stone fruit were long established in English cookery too. The crumb base is the giveaway: in households where bread was never wasted, stale loaf was the structural flour of the dessert course. Almonds in particular were the traditional standby of fast-day cooking across Europe, having long been used where meat, and sometimes eggs, were forbidden.