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Clove Cake
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1/4 cup sweet milk 1/2 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon soda 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 3/4 cup chopped raisins Cream shortening and sugar; drop the eggs in (not beaten), add milk, then part of the flour, then the fruit and the soda and rest of the flour. Bake in loaf pan in moderate oven, 35 minutes.
A small, one-bowl spice loaf of the kind that filled out a Christmas table when the fruitcake had to be stretched. The method is deliberately quick, and the mixing order matters more than it looks.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" is conventionally read as about 350F (some period sources allow up to 375F). For a loaf this size, 350F for 35 minutes is plausible, but test with a skewer at 30 minutes; brown sugar and cloves darken the crust before the centre is set.
- The flour quantity is out of proportionHalf a cup of flour cannot carry half a cup of shortening, a cup of sugar, two eggs, milk and three-quarters of a cup of raisins. Similar loaf cakes generally call for considerably more flour, so the printed figure is probably a misprint; work from a known loaf-cake ratio rather than following it literally.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often called for. Do not substitute buttermilk here without adjusting the leavening.
- ShorteningIn American books of this general period this usually means vegetable shortening, though butter or lard were often treated as interchangeable. Butter gives better flavour with cloves; keep it soft, not melted, so it will cream.
- Eggs dropped in unbeatenProbably deliberate rather than careless: adding whole eggs directly to the creamed fat and beating them in there is meant to preserve the air already worked into the shortening, which matters in a cake leavened with only half a teaspoon of soda.
- Soda with the fruitThe soda goes in late, mixed with the last of the flour, so it does not begin reacting before the batter reaches the pan. With no sour milk here, the acid must come from the brown sugar and its molasses. Get the loaf into the oven promptly.
- RaisinsChop them, as directed, and toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in. Whole raisins in a loose batter sink and leave a dense band at the bottom.
- SaltNo salt is listed, which is not unusual in recipes of this kind. If your fat is unsalted, add about 1/4 teaspoon.
- Pan and yieldAny small loaf pan will do; the recipe specifies no size. Expect a modest loaf that slices thin, and wrap it if keeping it more than a day.