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Wedding Cake
Mrs. Upham.
Five pounds of seeded raisins, two pounds of currants, one pound of citron, twelve eggs, one pound of butter , one pound sugar (brown), one coffee-cup of molasses, a molasses, a little brandy, one tea-cup of spices.
This is a contributor's ingredient list rather than a worked recipe — the sort of thing written down by a cook who had made it a dozen times and needed only the proportions. It is a dark English-style fruit cake, and a very large one. Two things are missing outright, so read the notes before you shop.
- There is no flour in the listA creamed cake of this type runs roughly a pound of flour to a pound each of butter and sugar, and that is almost certainly what was intended. The omission is either the contributor's shorthand or a typesetter's slip; treat the quantity as unrecorded rather than guessing that the cake was flourless.
- "a molasses, a molasses""a molasses" -- The words "a molasses" follow the coffee-cup measure with nothing attached to them, most likely a typesetting duplication or a dropped phrase. The coffee-cup of molasses is the measure to follow.
- Cup measures of the periodA coffee-cup is about a cup, a teacup about three-quarters of a cup. These were the actual vessels on the shelf, so neither is exact.
- A teacup of spicesRoughly 12 tablespoons on the three-quarter-cup reckoning above. The recipe does not say which spices; a mixture of the usual baking spices is the obvious reading for a batch of this size. It is a lot even so; a third of it will taste closer to modern expectations.
- Seeded raisins and citron"Seeded" means the seeds had been picked out of muscat raisins by hand, a tedious job that vanished with seedless varieties. Use dark raisins as they come. Citron is the candied peel of the citron fruit, still sold at holiday time and worth seeking out; candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute.
- Brown sugarNineteenth-century brown sugar was less refined and moister than today's light brown. Dark brown sugar gets you closer to the intended colour and flavour.
- Oven and timeThe contributor recorded no oven or timing at all. In modern terms a cake of this density wants a slow oven, 275-300F, in deep pans lined with buttered paper, for three to four hours depending on pan size. Cover the top with paper if it colours before the centre sets; test with a skewer rather than by the clock.
- Yield and keepingThe fruit alone is eight pounds, so the finished cake runs to twelve pounds or more. The recipe specifies only "a little brandy", which will do more for flavour than for keeping; wrapped and fed with spirit occasionally, this style of cake keeps for months.
This is a black wedding cake, the American descendant of the English plum cake that had been the standard bride's cake since the eighteenth century: pounds of dried fruit bound with butter, eggs and spice, darkened here with molasses and brown sugar, and preserved with brandy. The alcohol and sugar are what made the tradition of saving a tier — for a christening, or the first anniversary — practical rather than sentimental. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes donated by local housewives and sold for charity, which is why the page carries Mrs. Upham's name and none of her method: contributors wrote for readers assumed to know how a rich cake was mixed and baked, and the editors printed what they were given. The result is a snapshot of how such recipes actually circulated between households, as proportions passed along rather than instructions.