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Fruit Filling
1/2 cup water 2 tablespoons flour Juice 1 lemon 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup seeded raisins 1 dozen English walnuts Braid the flour with a little of the cold water. Heat the remainder, and when boiling, thicken with the flour. Then add the lemon juice, and chopped nuts and seeded raisins. When cold, spread between layers of cake.
A flour-thickened fruit and nut filling for layer cake, of the type used before powdered sugar buttercreams became standard. The ingredient list and the method do not quite match, so read both before starting.
- "Braid the flour"This is a printer's or scanner's error for blend: mix the 2 tablespoons flour to a smooth slurry with a little of the cold water so it does not lump when it meets the boiling liquid.
- The sugar is orphanedThe half cup of sugar appears in the list but never in the instructions. Dissolve it in the water you heat, before thickening; adding it at the end leaves it gritty.
- Cook the flour outOnce thickened, keep it at a bare simmer two to three minutes, stirring. A paste pulled off the heat the moment it thickens can taste of raw flour.
- Add lemon lastAcid can weaken starch thickening, so the lemon juice goes in after the flour has done its work, as the recipe directs.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that seeds were added. Modern seedless raisins need no preparation; chop them coarsely so the filling spreads evenly.
- English walnutsOrdinary walnuts, as distinct from the American black walnut. "A dozen" most likely means twelve whole nuts, which would give roughly 3/4 to 1 cup chopped; if halves are meant, about half that.
- Yield and thicknessWell over a cup, given a half cup each of water, sugar and raisins plus the nuts. It sets firmer as it cools; if it stiffens past spreading, loosen it with a teaspoon of water rather than reheating.
- KeepingBeing water- and flour-based with no fat or egg, it does not keep like a buttercream. Fill the cake the day it is made and refrigerate leftovers.
Fillings thickened with flour or cornstarch rather than butter were common in American home baking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lemon is doing real work here, cutting the sweetness of a filling that has no butter or cream to carry it.