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Fruit Cake
Mrs. Snider.
Half a pound of butter, half a pound of sugar; rub well together; four eggs well beaten, half a teaspoon of soda, one wine glass of whiskey, half a nutmeg, fruit to suit the taste, flour to stiffen; bake in a slow oven ; this cake will keep for weeks.
A terse pound-cake-with-fruit of the kind cooks kept in their heads rather than on paper. Two of the quantities are left to judgment, so read the whole thing before you start.
- The half-poundsHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (225 g); half a pound of granulated sugar is a scant 1 1/4 cups. Creamed together they will take four eggs without curdling if everything is at room temperature.
- "Flour to stiffen"This is the genuinely ambiguous instruction. For half a pound each of butter and sugar plus four eggs, a batter of this kind will usually take somewhere around 2 to 2 1/2 cups (250-310 g) of flour — enough that the batter holds a spoon upright but still drops from it. Add the last half cup gradually.
- "Fruit to suit the taste"Raisins, currants and candied peel are the likeliest intent, with other dried fruit as the pantry allowed. Something in the region of a pound to a pound and a half of dried fruit would be proportionate here; toss it in a little of the measured flour first so it does not sink.
- A wine glassIn nineteenth-century American cookbooks a wine glass is about 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup. The whiskey is flavour and preservative both.
- The sodaHalf a teaspoon of soda with no sour milk, molasses or buttermilk in the batter has almost nothing to react with — the lift here comes from the creamed butter and beaten eggs. Modern bakers substituting baking powder should use about 1 1/2 teaspoons.
- Half a nutmegFreshly grated, that is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons — assertive but correct for the style. Pre-ground nutmeg is weaker; use the same measure and expect less perfume.
- A slow ovenRoughly 300°F (150°C); period "slow" covers a range and can be read anywhere from about 275 to 325°F. Baked in a lined and papered 9-inch round or a large loaf pan, expect 1 3/4 to 2 1/2 hours; tent the top with foil once it colours and test with a skewer at the centre.
- Yield and keepingAbout one large cake, 16 to 20 slices. It does keep for weeks, wrapped closely and stored cool; brushing the cooled cake with a little more whiskey every week or so is the traditional way to hold it longer.
This is a plain American fruit cake rather than the black, treacle-dark British Christmas kind — no molasses, no boiled peel, no long-soaked currants, just a pound-cake base with whatever dried fruit the pantry held. The formula descends from the old pound cake, a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, halved here and stretched with fruit and spirit. Whiskey rather than brandy is the telling detail. The recipe is credited to a contributor, Mrs. Snider, and its last line about keeping matters more than any instruction about frosting.