Fruit Cake
2 teaspoons baking powder Few grains salt 2 tablespoons fruit juice 2 tablespoons milk 2 pounds currants 2 pounds raisins, seeded and finely chopped 1/2 pound date meats, finely chopped pound citron, thinly sliced and cut into short strips Cream the shortening, add sugar gradually and beat for 5 minutes. Beat the egg yolks until light and lemon-colored and the whites until stiff and dry. Add these to the butter and sugar mixture, then add the milk, fruit juice, chopped nuts and fruit that have been rolled in flour. Lastly, add the well-sifted dry ingredients (flour, spices, baking powder and salt), beat the mixture thoroughly and place in deep, round cake pans lined with several thicknesses of oiled paper. Bake 3 to 4 hours in a slow oven. the oven is difficult to regulate, cover the cake with several thicknesses of oiled paper the last hour of the baking.
A full-scale Christmas-style fruit cake, printed here with part of its ingredient list missing — the quantities for shortening, sugar, eggs, flour, spices and nuts have dropped out of the text. What survives is the fruit load and the method, both of which are worth reading closely.
- The list is incompleteOnly the leavening, salt, liquids and fruit are given; the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and spices called for in the method have no quantities. Treat this as a method to compare against a complete recipe rather than one to shop from.
- How much fruit that isTwo pounds of currants and two pounds of raisins are specified outright, with dates and citron on top (their fractions have dropped out of the text), so at least four pounds of fruit before any batter. The recipe calls for "pans" in the plural, so this was never a single loaf.
- A slow ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'slow' was generally understood as somewhere around 275-325F. Three to four hours at the lower end suits deep pans; a smaller pan will be done sooner, so test with a skewer rather than the clock.
- Lining the pans"Several thicknesses of oiled paper" is the hinge of the whole thing. Parchment doubled or tripled up the sides and across the base, standing a little proud of the rim, is what keeps the outside from scorching black before the middle sets. The paper cap for the last hour does the same job on top.
- ShorteningIn American books of this period shortening may mean butter, lard, a mixture, or a vegetable fat. Butter will give the fullest flavour in a cake that has nothing else to hide behind.
- Rolling fruit in flourTossing the fruit and nuts in a little of the measured flour before folding them in keeps them from sinking. Take that flour from the total rather than adding extra, or the crumb tightens.
- Beating whites stiff and dryPeriod phrasing for fully beaten whites. Stop at firm peaks; genuinely dry whites break into curds and fold in as lumps.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that seeds were added. Muscat raisins of the period had pips and needed the work; modern seedless raisins go straight in.
- Keeping itA cake this rich improves with a few weeks wrapped and stored cool, which is the point of making so much at once. The original assumes the reader knows this and says nothing about it.
Heavy fruit cakes of this kind descend from the British plum cake tradition, and by the early twentieth century they were fixed in American household books as the cake you made in quantity, in autumn, for Christmas and for weddings. The scale is the tell: a large quantity of dried fruit was a serious cash outlay, and the currants, dates and candied citron were costly goods, which is why such a cake read as celebratory rather than everyday. The instruction to line the pans with oiled paper and to cap the cake near the end belongs to an age of coal and early gas ranges with no thermostat o offoffer advice for when "the oven is difficult to regulate." Books like this one, issued by an insurance company for its policyholders, circulated free and helped standardise exactly this sort of set-piece recipe across American kitchens.