Rich Fruit Cake
2 cups sugar 2 cups shortening 6 eggs 4 cups seeded raisins 4 cups currants 4 cups flour 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 cup shelled almonds 2 cups sliced citron 2 tablespoons orange peel 2 tablespoons lemon peel 1 cup grape juice 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon ground mace 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1/4 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt Cream shortening and sugar together; add beaten yolks; add raisins and currants, which have been washed and dried and over which a half cup of flour has been sifted; blanch and put almonds through food chopper and add; put lemon and orange peel through food chopper and add; slice citron very fine and add; stir in grape juice and half of stiffly beaten whites of eggs; sift together cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, allspice, cloves, salt, baking powder and flour and add; mix well and fold in remainder of beaten whites; pour into two 12-inch pans which have been lined with four layers of brown paper and bake in moderate oven one hour; then cover with double layer of brown paper, put asbestos plates underneath and continuo baking about two hours longer.
A full-scale Christmas fruit cake from a baking-powder company's promotional book, sized for a household that expected to be feeding visitors for weeks. The quantities are real: this is roughly twelve pounds of batter.
- Skip the asbestosAsbestos plates were the standard heat diffuser in period kitchens and must not be used. Two heavy baking sheets stacked under the pans, or a pan set inside a larger pan, does the same job of shielding the bottom from direct heat.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no figure; a "moderate oven" in period sources is usually rendered as about 350-375F, but a cake this dense and this heavily fruited will scorch at the edges long before the centre sets. 300 to 325F for the whole three hours is the practical reading, and the four layers of brown paper and the diffuser plate suggest the writer was fighting the same problem.
- Pan size and yieldTwo 12-inch pans is an enormous bake and few home ovens will take them side by side. Divided among four 8-inch round pans or six standard loaf tins the batter behaves better and the timing drops to roughly two hours; test with a skewer, which should come out clean but slightly tacky with fruit.
- ShorteningTwo cups means solid fat: lard, or commercial hydrogenated vegetable shortening of the sort sold from the 1910s onward. Unsalted butter gives more flavour and browns more, so watch the edges; the half teaspoon of salt stays either way.
- Grape juiceUnfermented bottled grape juice, used here as the liquid where an older fruit cake would take brandy, sherry or Madeira. It contributes sweetness and acid but no preservative alcohol, so this cake will not keep the way a spirit-fed one does.
- Citron and peelCandied citron is the thick-cut peel of Citrus medica, still sold at Christmas but easily missed the rest of the year. Two cups sliced fine is a lot; candied orange and lemon peel can stand in, though the flavour goes brighter and less resinous.
- Flouring the fruitThe half cup of flour sifted over the raisins and currants is most likely taken from the four cups rather than added on top, though the text does not say. It keeps the fruit suspended rather than sinking.
- StorageCool completely in the pans before turning out, then wrap well. With no spirits in it, keep it refrigerated or freeze it rather than trusting it to a tin for a month.
Fruit cakes of this weight belong to the older English tradition of the rich plum cake, built on dried fruit, candied peel, spice and enough fat and sugar to keep for the length of a holiday season. What marks this version as American and of its moment is the grape juice: bottled unfermented juice, promoted heavily by temperance interests from the late nineteenth century onward, standing in for the brandy or wine that a Victorian recipe would have called for and that would also have preserved the cake. The book itself is a manufacturer's cookbook, issued to demonstrate what Royal Baking Powder could do, and the four teaspoons here are doing something a traditional fruit cake never asked of them - carrying a batter loaded with twelve cups of fruit and nuts. The layers of brown paper and the diffuser underneath are the honest part of the recipe: they record what baking in an unreliable oven actually required.