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Nelson Cake
Roll out a pound and a quarter of puff-paste, cover it with a pound and a half of well-washed currants, half a pound of sugar and a little spice; sprinkle over a small quantity of water to make the currants and sugar bind, cover with another pound of rolled-paste, and bake. When done, ice it, let it stand awhile, and serve.
A currant slab in puff paste, of the family that includes Eccles cakes and the Scottish fly cemetery. The proportions are for a bakery: roughly two and a quarter pounds of pastry and a pound and a half of fruit will fill a full sheet pan, so scale down unless you are feeding a crowd.
- Currants means driedThese are dried Zante currants, the small black raisins sold near the sultanas, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. A pound and a half is about 4 1/2 cups.
- Why they are washedNineteenth-century currants arrived gritty and often stalky, and washing was a necessary sorting step. Modern packaged currants need only a brief rinse or a soak in hot water for ten minutes to plump them; drain well, or the wet fruit will steam the bottom sheet of pastry into paste.
- The spice"A little spice" is left open. Mixed spice, or allspice with nutmeg, would suit the period; a teaspoon in total is a reasonable modern starting point. Cinnamon alone is defensible but reads more modern than the original probably intends.
- Puff paste quantitiesA pound and a quarter for the base against a pound for the lid may mean the bottom sheet is rolled a little thicker to carry the fruit, though the difference could be no more than rolling allowance. Two 1 lb blocks of all-butter frozen puff pastry, thawed, come close enough.
- Sealing and ventingThe point that decides whether this works: press the edges together firmly with a little water and cut steam slits across the top sheet before baking. Sealed shut, the filling generates steam that lifts the lid clean off the fruit and leaves a hollow cake.
- OvenPuff paste wants a hot oven, 400-425F, for 25-35 minutes, until the top is deep gold and the underside is dry and layered. Oscar's book assumes a baker who knows this; it never says.
- Icing itThe recipe says only "ice it". A thin water icing, confectioners' sugar slaked with a spoonful or two of water or lemon juice, brushed over while the cake is barely warm so it sets to a dry crust, is the likeliest reading. A buttercream would soften the pastry.
- Yield and cuttingThe recipe gives no pan size. Baked as a slab and cut into squares, the full quantity should give something in the region of two dozen substantial portions. Cut it after the icing has set, with a serrated knife, or the top sheet shatters.
Nelson cake belongs to the British family of currant-filled pastry slabs that includes the Eccles cake, the Chorley cake and the bluntly named fly cemetery, though British versions are as often recorded with a leftover bread or cake filling as with plain currants. The name is generally traced to Admiral Horatio Nelson, whose popularity attached itself to a great many nineteenth-century foods, puddings and inn signs, though no particular connection to the man himself is documented. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's collection is a reminder that the Waldorf's kitchen, for all its French menu language, drew heavily on the British and Anglo-American repertoire that hotel patrons expected at tea and on the buffet. The instructions read as they do because they were written for professionals: no oven temperature, no timing, no pan size, just quantities by the pound.