Spice Cake
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup brown sugar 3 eggs 3/4 cup water 1/2 cup raisins 1/4 cup citron 1 teaspoon soda 3 cups flour 1 teaspoon mixed allspice, nutmeg, cloves 1 teaspoon cinnamon Sprinkle ground mace cup raisins cup currants cup citron Mix as for other butter cakes. Raisins and currants should be chopped, or cut up fine. Citron will cut up more easily if first softened by steaming over hot water. Part of flour must be reserved to sift over fruit, which should be well beaten in, before stiff egg whites are folded in. Bake in loaf or tube pan, in very moderate oven, for about 50 minutes. It is usually well to line pan with several thicknesses of greased paper. 2 eggs 7 cup sugar Grated rind of lemon
A plain fruited butter cake of the interwar American type, mixed by the creaming method with the whites folded in last. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so treat it as a method to follow rather than a formula to weigh out.
- Quantities to supply yourselfNo fat, liquid or leavening beyond the soda is given, and several fruit and sugar amounts have lost their fractions. For 3 cups of flour a standard butter cake of this era would run to about 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup sour milk or buttermilk; use a trusted spice loaf formula for proportions and take the handling notes here.
- Soda needs an acidA teaspoon of soda with no baking powder implies the missing ingredients included an acid, most likely sour milk or buttermilk. With sweet milk the soda has nothing to react with and the crumb will be heavy and faintly soapy.
- "Very moderate oven"Around 325F. A fruited loaf at 350F will darken at the edges before the centre sets; 50 minutes is the low end, and a deep tube pan may need 60-70.
- The paper liningLining with several thicknesses of greased paper is not fussiness. Sugar and dried fruit scorch against a hot tin over a long bake, and the paper insulates the crust. Parchment does the same job.
- Flouring the fruitReserving part of the flour to sift over the raisins, currants and citron is meant to help keep them suspended. Unfloured fruit is more likely to sink in a slack batter.
- "Well beaten in, before stiff egg whites are folded in"The fruit goes into the heavy batter with a firm hand; the whites go in afterwards with a light one. Reversing the order knocks the air out.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold at holidays and increasingly hard to find. Steaming it soft before chopping is sound advice and works equally for stiff candied orange or lemon peel used in its place.
- Mixed spiceA teaspoon of combined allspice, nutmeg and cloves plus a teaspoon of cinnamon is restrained by modern taste, with a sprinkle of mace on top of that.
- YieldOne 9-inch tube cake or a large loaf, roughly 12 slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days.
Spice cakes of this kind sit between the plain butter cake and the heavy fruit cake, using dried fruit and ground spice to stretch a modest amount of butter and sugar into something that read as festive. The reliance on soda with sour milk points back to nineteenth-century home baking, when buttermilk was often a byproduct of the household churn rather than a purchase. Citron - the candied peel of a thick-rinded citrus grown chiefly in the Mediterranean - was a common pantry item in this period and appears in many American holiday cake formulas; its retreat from ordinary groceries is one marker of how far the baking cupboard has shifted.