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Fruit Loaf
Mrs. H. Baird.
One pint of bread sponge, one cup of brown sugar, one cup of molasses, one of butter, half cup of sweet milk. one cup of raisins, one of currants, a little lemon and citron peel, one tablespoonful of cinnamon, one teaspoon of cloves, one of allspice, two or three eggs. Beat eggs, butter, and sugar, add all together with flour enough to stiffen as an ordinary fruit cake.
A yeast-raised fruit loaf built on a piece of the morning's bread dough — the older, thriftier ancestor of the chemically leavened fruit cake. The recipe assumes a cook who already has sponge working and knows what a fruit cake batter should feel like, so the two things it leaves out are the two that matter: rising time and oven heat.
- Bread spongeA pint of bread sponge is roughly two cups of the loose, bubbly flour-water-yeast batter set overnight before the bread was made up. A modern substitute is about 16 oz of active, well-fed sourdough starter or a poolish at 100% hydration (1 cup flour, 1 cup water, a pinch of yeast, left 8-12 hours). The sponge is the only leavening here — there is no soda or baking powder in the list.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, named to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that a nineteenth-century kitchen also kept on hand. Whole milk is the right choice.
- CurrantsZante currants — small dried grapes — not fresh red or black currants. Sold near the raisins. Both fruits benefit from a brief soak in hot water or spirits and a thorough drying, or they will pull moisture from the crumb.
- Citron peelCandied citron, the thick-rinded citrus preserved in sugar, is still sold at holiday time but has become scarce. Candied orange or mixed peel stands in. "A little lemon and citron peel" suggests something on the order of a quarter cup of each, chopped fine.
- "Flour enough to stiffen"The target is a heavy dough that just holds a spoon upright — stiffer than cake batter, softer than bread dough. With this quantity of liquid, expect somewhere between 4 and 6 cups of flour, added by feel rather than measure.
- The rise, which the recipe omitsBecause the sponge is doing all the work and the batter is heavy with butter, sugar, molasses and fruit, fermentation is slow. Let the loaves rise in their tins until visibly puffed and springy, which may take 2 to 4 hours in a warm room. Rushing this stage is the usual cause of a dense, gummy loaf.
- OvenNo heat is given. A rich, dark, sugar-heavy loaf of this size wants a moderate oven — 325 to 350F — for 50 to 70 minutes, tented with foil once the top has coloured. Molasses and brown sugar scorch well before the centre sets.
- YieldEnough for two standard 9x5 loaf tins, or one large tin plus a small one. It keeps for a week wrapped, and improves after a day.
This is a bread-dough cake, the form that stood between plain bread and the elaborate fruit cakes of the later nineteenth century. Before chemical leavening was cheap and reliable, sweet spiced loaves across northern Europe and colonial America were raised by borrowing a portion of the household's bread sponge — the same principle behind German stollen, Cornish saffron cake and the older English "lardy" and fruit loaves. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women, and Mrs. Baird's version carries the marks of that practical, hand-to-hand transmission: no oven temperature, no baking time, no rising time. The heavy hand with molasses, cinnamon, cloves and allspice is characteristic of the period, and dried fruit signalled that a loaf was meant for company rather than for breakfast.