Nut Spice Cake
½ cup butter ½ teaspoon clove 1 cup brown sugar ½ cup molasses ¼ nutmeg, grated 1 cup raisins, seeded and cut Yolks 4 eggs in pieces 1 cup sour milk 1/2 cup currants 2½ cups flour ½ cup English walnut meats, 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon Mix ingredients in the order given. This recipe makes two loaves. cut in pieces 1½ teaspoons baking powder ½ cup butter ¾ cup brown sugar ¾ cup raisins, seeded and
This page has been mangled by the two-column typesetting of the original, so the ingredient list interleaves with itself and a fragment of the next recipe follows on. Read it as: ½ cup butter, 1 cup brown sugar, ½ cup molasses, yolks of 4 eggs, 1 cup sour milk, 2½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon soda, 1½ teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon clove, ¼ nutmeg grated, 1 cup seeded and cut raisins, ½ cup currants, and ½ cup English walnut meats cut in pieces.
- The trailing amountsThe nutmeg and flour quantities were checked against the printed page and read as given here. The butter, brown sugar, and raisin amounts tacked on after "cut in pieces" belong to the recipe that follows, not to this one.
- Sour milkMilk that had naturally soured, thick and acidic. Buttermilk is the closest supermarket equivalent; failing that, 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- Soda and baking powder togetherThe soda is there to neutralise the acid in the sour milk and the molasses, and the baking powder supplies the rest of the lift. Both are needed — dropping either gives a heavy, coarse loaf.
- Yolks onlyFour yolks with no whites gives a close, rich, dark crumb. The recipe says nothing about what to do with the whites, but they are worth saving for another use rather than being added to this batter.
- Grated nutmegA quarter of a whole nutmeg is roughly ½ teaspoon freshly grated. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its volatile oils fast, so grate it if you can.
- Mix in the order givenTaken literally: butter and sugar creamed, then molasses, then yolks, then the sour milk and the dry ingredients, with the fruit and nuts last. Tossing the raisins and currants with a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven direction. As a modern starting point, bake in two greased and paper-lined loaf pans at around 350F for 45 to 55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Molasses and brown sugar brown fast, so tent with foil if the tops darken early.
- Yield and keepingTwo loaves, as the recipe states. Like most spice-and-fruit loaves it improves after a day wrapped tightly, and it slices far more cleanly cold.
Nut spice cake belongs to the large family of American sour-milk cakes -- a group that existed because until home refrigeration was common, milk that had turned was a daily surplus rather than a waste product, and the acid in it paired with saleratus or soda to raise a cake before commercial baking powder was widespread. By the time this book appeared, baking powder was available, and this recipe uses both leaveners in the same batter, a transitional habit common in cake recipes of the period. English walnuts, so called to distinguish them from the native black walnut, were still worth naming as a specific ingredient; molasses and brown sugar together give the loaf the dark, chewy character that separates a spice cake from a pale butter cake. The interleaved fragment at the end of this text is a printing artefact of the original two-column ingredient layout, which OCR routinely scrambles.