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Black Cake (One pound powdered white sugar)
One pound powdered white sugar, three-quarters pound butter, pound sifted flour (brown or not as preferred), twelve eggs beaten separately, two pounds raisins stoned and part of them chopped, two of currants carefully cleaned, half pound citron cut in strips, quarter ounce each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves mixed, wineglass wine and one of brandy; rub butter and sugar together, add yolks of eggs, part of flour, the spice, and whites of eggs well beaten; then add remainder of flour, and wine and brandy; mix all thoroughly together; cover bottom and sides of a four-quart milk-pan with buttered white paper, put in a layer of the mixture, then a layer of the fruit (first dredging the fruit with flour), until pan is filled up three or four inches. A small cup of Orleans molasses makes the cake blacker and more moist, but for this it is not necessary to add more flour. Bake three and one-half or four hours in a slow oven. This is excellent. - Mrs. M. M. Munsell, Del aware.
A full-sized Victorian fruitcake: roughly eight pounds of batter and fruit, baked most of an afternoon. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the vessel need translating before you start.
- The slow oven"Slow" in this period means about 300F, and for a cake this dense you want the low end of it — 275-300F. At three and a half to four hours the surface will darken well before the centre sets, so tent the top with foil or a doubled sheet of paper once it has taken colour.
- The four-quart milk-panA straight-sided pan of about a gallon capacity, filled only three or four inches deep. A 10-inch round cake pan, or two 9x5 loaf pans, will hold the batter at a comparable depth; check the capacity of whatever you use, since this is a very large quantity of batter. Line the bottom and sides with buttered parchment as directed; the paper is genuine insulation over four hours, not decoration.
- Wineglass measuresA wineglass in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. So roughly 1/4 cup wine and 1/4 cup brandy. Sherry, madeira or a sweet port all suit the fruit.
- Spices by weightA quarter ounce is about 7 grams, or close to a tablespoon of ground cinnamon, nutmeg or cloves. A tablespoon of ground cloves is assertive; if you want the cake less medicinal, hold the cloves nearer two teaspoons and make up the difference with the cinnamon.
- Twelve eggsPeriod eggs ran smaller than today's large grade. Ten to eleven large eggs, separated, gets you closer to the intended volume. The beaten whites are the only leavening in the cake — there is no soda or powder — so fold them in rather than stirring.
- Brown flour and Orleans molasses"Brown" flour here means a less-refined wheat flour, closer to a light whole wheat; plain all-purpose is the safer default. Orleans molasses was Louisiana cane molasses, unsulphured and mild — an ordinary dark (not blackstrap) molasses is the modern equivalent.
- Currants and citronZante currants are dried grapes, not fresh redcurrants. Candied citron is still sold at holiday time and in Italian groceries; candied lemon peel substitutes without much loss. Dredging the fruit in flour, as instructed, is what keeps it from sinking.
- Layering the fruitThe recipe alternates batter and fruit rather than folding the fruit through. This works, but drag a knife or skewer through the layers once the pan is filled so the seams knit; otherwise the cake can shear along a fruit line when cut.
- Doneness and keepingJudge by a long skewer coming out clean and the cake pulling slightly from the paper, not by the clock — a shallower pan will finish nearer three hours. Cool fully in the pan. Wrapped in brandy-dampened cloth and kept in a tin, it improves for weeks. One pan serves twenty-five or more in thin slices.
Black cake is the dark, heavily fruited, spirit-soaked end of the British plum-cake tradition, carried into American and Caribbean kitchens and named for the colour that comes from long slow baking, dark fruit and, as Mrs. Munsell notes, a cup of molasses. In a Southern book of the 1880s, a cake at this scale was occasion food — weddings, Christmas, a funeral gathering — which is why the recipe is casual about a four-quart pan and four hours of oven heat, and why it is built to keep. The absence of any chemical leavening dates the method as much as anything: twelve eggs beaten separately do all the lifting, a technique that had been standard since the eighteenth century and was already being displaced by baking powder in lighter cakes. Contributions signed with a name and a town, like this one from Delaware — a town name as often as a state in books of this family — were the backbone of the compiled community cookbook, a genre that flourished in the decades after the Civil War.