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Birthday Cake
One pound and a-half of fine sugar, one pound and ahalf of butter, three pounds and one-half of currants, two pounds of flour, one-half pound candied peel, one-half pound almonds, two ounces spices, the grated rind of three lemons, eighteen eggs, one gill of brandy. Paper the hoops, and bake three hours. Ice when cold.
This is a full-scale Victorian rich fruit cake — roughly eleven pounds of batter before icing — written for a cook who already knew how such cakes behaved. The gaps worth filling are the oven, the vessel, and the fact that the fruit outweighs everything else.
- Bake it low, not moderateThree hours is only survivable at a genuinely slow oven, about 275–300F. At 350F the outside of a cake this dense will be dark and dry long before the centre sets.
- "Paper the hoops"Hoops are bottomless cake rings set on a papered baking sheet; line them with two or three layers of parchment standing an inch above the rim. Modern equivalents are deep round tins, similarly double-lined, and the batter is enough for two 9-inch tins plus a loaf, or three 8-inch tins.
- A gill of brandyBetween half and two-thirds of a cup, depending on whether the imperial gill (5 fl oz) or the US gill (4 fl oz) is meant. It is a flavouring here rather than a preservative at this volume, though brandy brushed over the cooled cake before icing is often recommended in period cookery.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh blackcurrants or red currants. Three and a half pounds is correct and deliberate: the fruit is the cake, and the batter should look barely able to hold it together.
- Two ounces of spicesGenuinely ambiguous — the original assumes a house blend. Period mixtures lean on cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves and allspice; two ounces by weight is about half a cup of ground spice, which is assertive but in scale for eleven pounds of cake.
- Candied peel and almondsBuy whole candied citron, orange and lemon peel and chop it yourself; the pre-diced supermarket mix is largely sugar. Blanch and chop the almonds rather than using ground almond meal, which will disappear into the crumb.
- Eighteen eggsModern large eggs may run somewhat bigger than those the recipe assumed, so weigh rather than count if you want to match the original proportions. Beat them in gradually, or the creamed butter and sugar will curdle and the cake will be heavy.
- Testing and coolingA skewer to the centre must come out clean; a cake this size can want three and a half hours. Cool it completely in the tin — turning it out warm will break it — and let it sit a day before icing.
- Icing"Ice when cold" is unspecified; for cakes of this type royal icing over a layer of almond paste was the usual finish, and it helped them keep. Wrapped whole, the cake will keep and improve for some weeks, and serves forty or more in thin slices.
Cakes like this one were central to ceremonial baking in many English-speaking households: much the same batter, differently decorated, could serve as birthday cake, wedding cake or christening cake, and the quantities here are sized for an occasion rather than a family tea. Its ancestry runs back through the boiled and baked plum cakes of the seventeenth century, when currants, candied peel, spices and brandy were all imported luxuries and a cake that used them by the pound was itself the display. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from recipes contributed by ladies of Canadian towns and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, which helps explain the telegraphic style — a contributor writing for peers who needed the proportions and nothing else. The instruction to paper the hoops and ice when cold is the whole of the method thought worth spelling out.