Wedding Cake
Take one pound of brown sugar; one pound of butter; one pound of flour; four pounds of raisins; three pounds of currants; one pound of citron; two cups of molasses; one wine-glass of brandy; one-half ounce of mace; one-half ounce of cinnamon; onehalf ounce of nutmeg; one-half ounce of cloves; ten eggs. Seed the raisins and chop them rather coarse. Wash the currants, remove the little stems by vigorously rubbing the currants in a coarse towel, and dry the fruit thoroughly. Cut the citron into rather small pieces. Sift the flour, put in all the spice, and sift again to mix thoroughly. Rub the butter and the sugar together until they form a light cream. Separate the whites and the yolks of the eggs, beat the yolks light, add to the butter and sugar; then add the molasses and brandy, stirring well after each addition. Sift a little of the flour upon the raisins and currants, and stir the rest of it into the mixture, beating until smooth; then add the fruit and lastly the beaten whites of the eggs. Line two medium-sized cake-tins with well-buttered paper, divide the mixture between them, and bake for two hours, in a slow oven. This cake will last for years. Keep it in a stone jar or tin box in a cool place.
This is a full-scale Victorian bride's cake: nine pounds of dried fruit against one pound of flour, which makes it less a cake than fruit held together by batter. Read the quantities before you shop, and expect to halve it unless you are feeding a wedding.
- Slow ovenBake at 275-300F. At that density and depth the two hours given is a minimum; a large tin can want three to four. Test with a skewer into the centre and look for it to come out clean of wet batter, not for the top to colour.
- Pan sizes"Two medium-sized cake-tins" is optimistic for roughly fourteen pounds of batter. Use two 8- or 9-inch round tins at least 3 inches deep, or three shallower ones, and fill no more than three-quarters full.
- Buttered paperParchment does the job the original's buttered paper did. Line base and sides with a double thickness and wrap the outside of the tin in newspaper or a folded towel tied with string, so the fruit at the edges does not scorch over such a long bake.
- Wine-glass of brandyAbout 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Period wine glasses ran small; anything from 1½ to 2½ ounces is within the spirit of it.
- Half an ounce of each spiceTwo ounces of ground spice in all, something on the order of half a cup, which by modern palates is very heavy indeed. Ground spice of the period was often sold stale and coarse; with fresh jars, half these amounts gives a cake that still tastes strongly of clove and mace.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Modern packets come cleaned, so the towel-rubbing step for stems is usually unnecessary, though a quick pick-over is worth it.
- Raisins"Seed the raisins" belongs to an era before seedless varieties were standard. Use seedless raisins and simply chop them coarsely as directed.
- Flouring the fruitThe handful of flour sifted over raisins and currants is what keeps them suspended rather than sunk. Do not skip it, and fold the fruit and the beaten whites in by hand at the end so the batter is not knocked flat.
- Keeping"This cake will last for years" is not much of an exaggeration for a cake this sugared, spiced and spirited. Wrap in parchment then foil in a tin; brushing a spoonful of brandy over the surface every few weeks for the first month or two is the traditional way to mature it.
- YieldTwo tins of this size give a great many thin slices, thin slicing being the customary way wedding cake was served.
The pound-of-each framework here is the old English pound cake skeleton, loaded with fruit until it becomes the dark, keeping cake that served as a bride's cake through the nineteenth century. Its virtue was durability rather than delicacy: sugar, molasses, brandy and dried fruit together leave little free water, so the cake could be baked weeks ahead of the wedding, carried, cut, and — by long tradition — boxed up for guests to take home, or a top layer saved for a christening. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued cookbooks for the same audience of home-managing women who bought its paper patterns, and a recipe of this scale suggests, though it cannot prove, a household that expected to cater its own weddings. White iced wedding cakes were already fashionable by 1900, but the dark fruit interior beneath the almond paste and royal icing remained the expected form in Britain for decades more, and persisted in parts of America as well.