Fruit Cake
One pound of flour, one pound of sugar, one pound butter, two pounds of currants, one pound raisins, one-half pound citron, one ounce mace, one ounce cinnamon, four nutmegs, one ounce cloves, eight eggs, wine glass brandy, one-half ounce extract rose.
This is a pound-cake formula in the older style: equal weights of flour, sugar and butter, no leavening, and no method at all. The proportions are sound but the spicing is written for a much larger batch than most cooks want, and the baking is entirely left to you.
- The spice is the thing to fix firstThree ounces of ground spice plus four whole nutmegs in a cake built on one pound of flour is overwhelming by modern palates and would read as medicinal. Cutting them right back — roughly a teaspoon each of mace, cinnamon and cloves and one grated nutmeg — gives a well-spiced fruitcake.
- Extract of roseHalf an ounce of rose extract is about a tablespoon. Rosewater is much weaker than a rose extract or essence; if you use true rose extract, a scant teaspoon is plenty, and rosewater can be used at a tablespoon or so.
- Wine glassA wine glass in period cookbooks is about 2 fl oz, or a quarter cup. Brandy here is both flavour and preservative.
- Currants and raisinsCurrants means dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Citron is candied citron peel, sold in blocks around the holidays; chopped candied orange or lemon peel substitutes cleanly.
- No leavening is intentionalThe lift comes entirely from creaming the butter and sugar thoroughly and beating the eight eggs in gradually. With three and a half pounds of fruit and peel in the batter, the crumb is meant to be dense.
- Flouring the fruitToss the currants, raisins and citron with a few spoonfuls of the weighed flour before folding them in, or the fruit sinks to the bottom during the long bake.
- Oven and timeBake slow: 275–300°F. In two lined and papered loaf tins expect 2½ to 3 hours; in one large deep pan, 3½ hours or more. Test with a skewer at the centre and tent with foil once the top has coloured.
- Yield and keepingThe batter weighs something like seven to eight pounds — two large loaves or one big cake of about twenty generous slices. Wrapped in brandy-dampened cloth and kept airtight in a cool place, it improves for weeks.
Fruitcake of this kind — pound for pound of flour, butter and sugar, then loaded with two or three times its weight in dried fruit and a heavy hand of spice — descends from the rich English plum cakes of the eighteenth century, and the ingredient-list-only format appears in American receipt and community cookbooks. What such a recipe records is the proportions. A cake this expensive was made once a year for Christmas or a wedding and kept, brandy-fed, for months. Fruitcake's long association with weddings is well established: the keeping quality that made it practical for a household with no refrigeration also made it the traditional cake to save a slice of.