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Simple Fruit Cake
1/2 cup Mazola 1/2 cup Karo, Blue Label 3/4 cup brown sugar 3 eggs, beaten 1/3 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup milk 1¾ cups bread flour 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon each clove and allspice 1/3 teaspoon nutmeg 3/4 cup halved, moist raisins 1/4 cup chopped, candied orange or grape fruit peel 3/4 cup moist currants 1/2 cup finely sliced citron 1/4 cup chopped, candied pineapple (optional) Pour the Mazola into a mixing bowl, add the Karo, sugar and eggs. Beat till very smooth, then add the milk. Sift to gether the flour, cornstarch, soda, salt and spices. Add the fruit, stirring till well coated. Stir into the first mixture and transfer to a good-sized round pan, or two brick-shaped pans oiled with Mazola and lined with smooth, thin paper. Cover and steam for an hour, then bake in a slow oven, 325 degrees F. for a second hour. Keep two or three weeks before using.
A branded corn-products fruit cake: no butter, no brandy, and an hour of steaming before it ever sees the oven. The proportions work, but several of the product names and fractions need translating.
- The hinge: steam first, bake secondThe covered hour of steam sets the crumb gently and helps keep a syrup-heavy batter from drying at the edges; the dry hour at 325F finishes it and firms the top. Skipping the steam will likely give a coarser, drier cake. Set the covered pan on a rack in a large pot with simmering water reaching a third of the way up, and top up the water as needed.
- Mazola, Karo, ArgoMazola is corn oil, so any neutral oil works. Karo was sold under several coloured labels; Blue Label is generally taken to be the light, clear syrup, and modern light corn syrup is the substitute. Argo and Kingsford's were both the company's cornstarch brands; ordinary cornstarch is the same thing.
- "13/4 cups" flourA typesetting run-together for 1 3/4 cups. With the 1/4 cup cornstarch that gives 2 cups of dry starch total, which is right for this quantity of fruit.
- Bread flour and cornstarchThe cornstarch is there to soften the high-protein bread flour, an old substitute for cake flour. If you use modern all-purpose, keep the cornstarch anyway; the cake is meant to be tender rather than chewy.
- Thirds of a teaspoon1/3 teaspoon salt and nutmeg is an odd measure by modern standards; a scant half teaspoon of each is within the intent.
- Soda without obvious acidOne teaspoon of soda is leavened by the brown sugar and corn syrup, both mildly acidic. Level the spoon carefully; excess soda in a spiced cake reads as soapy and darkens the crumb.
- Citron and candied peelCandied citron is a specialty item now, sold around the winter holidays or online; chopped candied lemon peel is the nearest common stand-in. "Moist" raisins and currants means plump ones, so soak dry fruit in hot water or tea and drain well before flouring.
- Pans and yieldThe batter comes to roughly 3 lb: two 8x4-inch loaf pans, or one good-sized round, oiled and lined with parchment. Fill no more than two-thirds full.
- Keeping itThere is no spirit in this cake, so the two or three weeks of ripening should happen wrapped tightly in parchment and foil in a cool place, or refrigerated. Unlike a brandy-fed fruit cake it will mold rather than improve if left in a warm kitchen.
This appears to come from a promotional cookbook, very likely one issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose Mazola oil, Karo syrup and Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch appear in nearly every line of the ingredient list. Such booklets were the standard advertising of the early twentieth century: recipes engineered to show that a single manufacturer's products could replace butter, sugar and cake flour all at once. What makes this version "simple" is precisely those substitutions, and an oil-and-syrup fruit cake did not require the long ripening in spirits that a traditional wedding or Christmas cake demanded. The steam-then-bake method it borrows from the older English boiled and steamed puddings, which were cooked in cloth or covered basins over water long before household ovens were reliable enough to be trusted with a dense fruited batter.