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Plain Fruit Cake (II)
Mrs. Hamilton.
Three cups of sugar, one and a-half of butter, one and a-half of molasses, one of milk, four eggs, one teaspoonful soda, two teaspoonsful cinnamon, two teaspoonsful cloves, two teaspoonsful nutmeg, two pounds currants, one-half pound citron, one glass of wine, flour to make a stiff batter.
A large spiced fruit cake given in the shorthand of its day: ingredients only, no pan, no oven, no time. The gaps are the work.
- Flour to make a stiff batterWith this much sugar, butter, molasses and milk you are looking at roughly 5 to 6 cups (about 700-850 g) of all-purpose flour. Add it in stages and stop when the batter holds a mounded shape on the spoon and drops from it reluctantly; it should be stiffer than a butter cake, closer to a thick cookie dough once the fruit goes in.
- Cup sizeNineteenth-century American receipts assume a cup of about 8 fluid ounces, close enough to a modern measuring cup. A cup and a half of butter is 12 oz, or three sticks.
- Soda and molassesThe single teaspoon of soda is there to neutralize the acid in the molasses, not to leaven the cake on its own. Dissolve it in the milk rather than dumping it dry into the batter, or you will get brown flecks and a soapy patch.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, small dried grapes, not fresh red or black currants. Two pounds is a great deal; rinse and dry them, then toss with a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in half-pound tubs or by weight around the winter holidays. Mixed candied peel is a reasonable substitute if citron is not to be had.
- One glass of wineA wine glass of the period held about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Sherry, Madeira or a sweet dark wine suits the spices.
- Oven and timeFruit cakes of this weight want a slow oven, 300-325F, with the pan lined in parchment and the outside wrapped in a collar of paper or foil against scorching. Expect two to two and a half hours in a 10-inch tube pan, or divide between two loaf pans and check at about 90 minutes; a skewer should come out clean of batter, though it may be sticky with fruit.
- Yield and keepingA very large cake: the fruit alone is two and a half pounds, and the finished cake will run to something like seven or eight pounds, enough for a great many thin slices. It improves after a few days wrapped tightly; the molasses and wine keep it moist for a week or two in a cool place.
"Plain" here most likely means not unfruited but unfrosted and comparatively unshowy, made without the eggs-by-the-dozen extravagance of a bride's cake or the brandy soakings of a wedding fruit cake. Books like The Home Cook Book, compiled in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, are full of these paired variants, Plain Fruit Cake I and II, because each subscriber sent in her own household proportions. The heavy hand with currants, citron, molasses and the three warm spices reflects what a well-stocked pantry could hold: dried fruit and candied peel that traveled and stored well, sweetening from the molasses barrel as much as the sugar loaf, and a small measured glass of wine treated as a flavoring rather than a drink. That the recipe names no pan and no oven temperature tells you the cook was expected to know her own stove, which was a personal acquaintance rather than a number on a dial.