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Fruit Loaf
12 ounces of sultanas 1/4 teaspoon of carbonate of soda 1 pound of flour 8 ounces of Albene or oil 1/2 pint of milk Rub the Albene and flour together; when well mixed, add the sultanas. Put the soda into the milk. Beat all thoroughly together; put into a well-greased baking tin, and bake in a quick oven for an hour and a quarter.
A rubbed-in fruit loaf of the plainest kind: no eggs, no sugar beyond the sultanas, and just enough soda to lift a very heavy batter. Weigh rather than measure, and treat the stated oven heat with suspicion.
- AlbeneA proprietary solid cooking fat of vegetable origin, of the kind sold in early twentieth-century vegetarian cookery as a butter and lard substitute; its exact composition is not recoverable from the recipe. Use a firm block vegetable shortening or a hard baking margarine; the recipe's alternative of "oil" will not rub into flour the same way and gives a greasier, denser crumb.
- The oven heat is the problemA "quick oven" is usually reckoned at roughly 400-425F, and this plain loaf would likely colour hard outside before the centre set over an hour and a quarter. Bake at 350F, allow about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, and cover the top loosely with foil once it has coloured.
- Weights and volumes1 lb flour is about 3 1/2 cups; 8 oz fat is 1 cup; 12 oz sultanas is roughly 2 1/4 cups. Half a British pint is 10 fl oz, not 8, so measure 1 1/4 cups of milk.
- Soda needs an acidA quarter teaspoon of carbonate of soda in a pound of flour, dissolved in sweet milk, has almost nothing to react with. Use buttermilk or milk soured with a teaspoon of lemon juice, or substitute 2 teaspoons of baking powder sifted into the flour, if you want any rise at all.
- "Beat all thoroughly" is misleadingThis is a rubbed-in dough, close to a rock cake or Irish tea bread. Fold the milk in only until the flour is damp; beating it thoroughly develops gluten and gives a tough, rubbery loaf.
- Tin and yieldThe quantities come to something like three pounds of dough, so allow two 1-lb tins, or more than a single 2-lb (9x5 inch) tin. Line the tin as well as greasing it.
- Doneness and keepingA skewer to the centre should come out clean and the loaf sound hollow when tapped underneath. It is a dry, unsweetened bread by design, meant to be sliced thin and buttered, and it improves after a day wrapped in a cloth.
Meatless cookery of this period was written for two overlapping audiences: ethical vegetarians, many of them connected to temperance and food-reform movements, and ordinary households trying to stretch a budget. A loaf like this suits both, since it contains no eggs and no butter, relying instead on one of the proprietary vegetable fats made from refined nut and coconut oils. Albene was one of several such brands marketed directly to vegetarian cooks, and its appearance by name in the ingredient list — rather than a generic "fat" — is a reminder that such books were often published alongside advertisements for the very sorts of products they specified. The recipe itself is nothing more exotic than a plain fruit tea bread of the sort baked across Britain and Ireland, adapted by the simple expedient of swapping out the butter.