Home › Cake-Making › Black Cake (One pound flour one)
Black Cake (One pound flour one)
One pound flour, one of currants, one of raisins, one of sugar, half pound citron, half pound chopped figs, three-fourths pound butter, ten eggs, leaving out two whites, tea-cup molasses, one of sour cream and soda, one gill brandy or good whisky, half cup cinnamon, two table-spoons allspice and cloves, four table-spoons jam. -From an old Virginia housekeeper.
A very large nineteenth-century fruit cake with no pan size, oven heat or baking time given — all of which the original cook was expected to know. The batter runs to roughly ten pounds.
- Oven and timeNeither is given. A cake of this size needs slow baking: a low oven, in the region of 275-300F, for three to four hours, testing the centre with a straw, is a reasonable modern approach. High heat will set the crust long before the centre cooks and the sugar and molasses will scorch.
- A gillHalf a cup, so the brandy or whisky measure is 4 fl oz.
- TeacupA period teacup is smaller than a modern mug — reckon about 6 fl oz, or three-quarters of a cup, for the molasses and for the sour cream.
- "Sour cream and soda"The quantity of soda is unstated. A common rule of thumb was somewhere between half and one teaspoon of saleratus (baking soda) per cup of sour milk or cream, dissolved in the cream before adding. Sour cream here means naturally soured, acidic cream; modern cultured sour cream is a fair stand-in, buttermilk less rich but workable.
- Half a cup of cinnamonThis is the one figure to question. Half a cup of ground cinnamon plus two tablespoons each of allspice and cloves is extraordinarily heavy even for a cake of this size. Start at two to three tablespoons of cinnamon unless you want a cake that tastes of nothing else.
- Citron and figsCandied citron is still sold at holidays; candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute. Chop both it and the figs to raisin size and toss the whole fruit mixture in a little of the weighed flour so it does not sink.
- EggsTen eggs less two whites, so ten yolks and eight whites. Period eggs ran smaller than today's large; nine modern large eggs plus one extra yolk is close.
- "Four table-spoons jam"Unspecified. A dark preserve such as blackberry, damson or quince suits the cake, contributing colour and moisture as much as flavour, but the recipe does not say which was meant.
- Pans and yieldLine the tins with two layers of buttered paper. The batter fills two 9-inch round deep pans or three loaf tins and gives something in the region of forty to fifty thin slices. It keeps for weeks wrapped and periodically brushed with spirits.
Black cake is the American descendant of the English plum cake, darkened here by molasses, brown spice and a heavy hand with currants and raisins rather than by long-soaked fruit. The same lineage produced the Caribbean black cake, where the fruit is macerated in rum for months, and the wedding and Christmas cakes of British tradition. Recipes of this type were kept as capital: they cost a great deal in sugar, spice and imported citron, they were made in quantity once or twice a year, and they improved with keeping, which is why the attribution matters — "from an old Virginia housekeeper" told a reader that this was a tested household formula, handed on rather than invented. The absence of an oven temperature is typical of an age when a wood-fired range was judged by hand and experience, not by a dial.