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Old Hartford Election Cake
Five pounds sifted flour, two of butter, two of sugar, thre gills distillery yeast or twice the quantity of home brewed, four eggs, gill of wine, gill of brandy, one quart sweet milk, half an ounce of nutmeg, two pounds raisins, one of citron; rub the butter and flour together very fine, add half the sugar, then the yeast and half the milk (hot in winter, blood-warm in summer), then add the eggs, then remainder of the milk, and the wine; beat well and let rise in a warm place all night; in the morning beat a long time, adding brandy, sugar, spice, and fruit well floured, and allow to rise again very light, after which put in cake pans and let rise ten or fifteen minutes; have the oven about as hot as for bread. This cake will keep any length of time. For raised cakes use potato yeast if fresh made; it is always a perfect success. This recipe is over one hundred years old. -Mrs. Eliza Burnham, Milford Center.
A yeast-risen fruit cake built on a bread-dough schedule: mixed at night, beaten and enriched in the morning, baked like a loaf. The quantities are for a household or a church supper, not a weeknight.
- Scale it down firstFive pounds of flour, two of butter and two of sugar, plus the milk, eggs, spirits and three pounds of fruit, make something on the order of fifteen pounds of dough — several large loaf pans' worth. Cutting the recipe to a quarter brings it down to a batch you can beat by hand or in a stand mixer.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Three gills of yeast is 1 1/2 cups of liquid barm; with modern dry yeast, roughly one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) per pound of flour is the working equivalent, since packaged yeast is far more concentrated than any distillery or potato barm.
- Distillery and potato yeastBoth were liquid, actively fermenting cultures — one skimmed from distillery or brewery fermentation, the other a boiled-potato and sugar starter kept in the pantry. Neither is easily had now. A sourdough starter or commercial yeast will raise the dough; with commercial yeast the flavor will be cleaner and less sour than the original.
- "As hot as for bread"In modern terms somewhere in the region of 350–400F, since the recipe gives no degrees. A cake this heavy and this large wants the lower end and a long bake — expect well over an hour for a full-size loaf, and cover the top with foil if the fruit on the surface begins to scorch. An internal temperature of 200–205F is a reliable test.
- Half an ounce of nutmegThat is roughly two tablespoons of freshly grated nutmeg for the full batch, about two whole nutmegs — assertive by modern taste. Reduce it before you reduce anything else if it seems too much.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in tubs at holiday time or in bulk from baking suppliers. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes without much loss; do not use the fresh fruit.
- Milk temperature"Hot in winter, blood-warm in summer" is a note about kitchens without central heating. Aim for 100–110F year round; anything above about 130F will kill the yeast, and the butter-flour rubbing means the dough is already slow to warm.
- The hinge: the morning beatingThe long second beating develops the gluten that has to carry two pounds of raisins and a pound of citron. Skip it and the fruit sinks. Flour the fruit as directed and work it in with the brandy, sugar and spice during that beating, then give the filled pans the ten or fifteen minutes' rise the recipe calls for before they go in.
- KeepingThe claim that it keeps "any length of time" rests on the sugar, fruit, wine and brandy. Wrapped and kept cool it holds for weeks; brushing the cooled loaf with a little more brandy extends it further.
Election cake belongs to New England, and its presence in this collection reflects how these community cookbooks circulated recipes by mail and memory rather than by region. The name comes from the annual spring election days in Connecticut and Massachusetts, when freemen traveled to Hartford or Boston to vote and militia companies mustered; large yeast-raised fruit cakes were baked in quantity to feed them, and the tradition is generally traced to the late eighteenth century, which fits Mrs. Burnham's note that her recipe was already over a hundred years old. Structurally it is a rich bread rather than a cake — a starter, an overnight sponge, no chemical leavening. Milford Center is in Ohio, and the recipe's journey from Hartford to an Ohio farmhouse is a fair picture of how nineteenth-century American baking actually moved.