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Family Cake
Warm half a pound of butter and mix with it an equal quantity of moist sugar, a pound of molasses, a couple of eggs a breakfast cupful of sour milk; mix together also a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda with four large cupfuls of flour and place in the pan, beating them well. Then take half a pound of well-stoned raisins and a pound of well-washed currants, dried, flour them and stir in with the other preparation. Place on a greased pan, baking in an oven until done, and serve.
A large, dense molasses fruit cake of the plain nineteenth-century type. The original assumes a cook who knows what "until done" means, so the pan, the oven and the leavening are the things to settle before you start.
- Weights in cupsHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (225 g); half a pound of moist sugar is about 1 cup packed brown sugar. A pound of molasses is roughly 1 1/3 cups by volume — weigh it if you can, since molasses volume measures badly.
- Moist sugar"Moist sugar" is unrefined or partly refined brown sugar, damp and clumping. Light or dark brown sugar is the direct substitute; dark suits the molasses better.
- Sour milkA breakfast cupful is a generous cup, around 8-9 fl oz. Use buttermilk; it supplies the acid the soda needs. Fresh milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice also works.
- Leavening is thinOne teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda is light for a cup of sour milk plus a pound of molasses, both acidic, and for four cups of flour. Expect a close, moist, gingerbread-like crumb rather than a risen cake; if you want more lift, a second teaspoon is within reason.
- Order of mixing"Place in the pan" here probably means the mixing bowl rather than the baking tin, since a greased pan is named separately at the end; on that reading the flour and soda go into the batter and are beaten in. Add the flour last and stop as soon as it disappears.
- Flouring the fruitHalf a pound of raisins and a pound of currants is 1 1/2 lb of fruit for four cups of flour, which is a lot of weight in suspension. Tossing the fruit in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps it from sinking. Modern packaged dried currants need no washing or drying.
- Pan and ovenGrease and line a 9x13 pan or two 9x5 loaf tins. The original gives no oven setting at all; 325-350F suits this batter. A sheet takes about 50-60 minutes, loaves 1 to 1 1/4 hours. A skewer should come out clean with no wet batter clinging.
- Yield and keepingAbout 20 generous squares. Like most molasses cakes it improves after a day wrapped tightly, and it keeps a week.
"Family cake" was a category rather than a single recipe: the everyday fruited cake a household baked in quantity, distinguished from the eggy, brandied wedding and Christmas cakes by its reliance on molasses, sour milk and soda instead of a pound of eggs and expensive spirits. The method belongs to the American and British kitchen of the mid-1800s, when saleratus and bicarbonate of soda made chemical leavening cheap and cooks learned to pair it with whatever acid was in the larder — buttermilk, sour milk, molasses. Currants and raisins were the affordable dried fruits, imported in bulk and often sold uncleaned, which is why the original insists they be well washed and well stoned.