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May 27
Menu: Chutney Canapes; Roast Sirloin of Beef; Franconia Potatoes Summer Squash; Olive Salad; Strawberry Ice Cream; Coffee; Genoa Cake Genoa Cake-14 pound Crisco, and 14 pound butter. Mix to a cream with 1/2 pound sugar, add little mace, stir in gradually yolk of 6 eggs and 1/2 beaten whites, 10 ounces flour, beat well for 1 minute, add 1 pound raisins, 14 pound citron, cut very fine, grated rind of 1 lemon, and 2 ounces chopped almonds. Mix well, add remainder of beaten whites last. Mix well, put in pan lined with paper, sprinkle top with chopped almonds and bake in slow oven.
A dense, buttery fruit cake in the English style, weighed rather than measured. The quantities work out to roughly a pound of fat and sugar against ten ounces of flour and a pound and a half of fruit and nuts, so the batter is barely a batter at all — it is fruit held together with a rich creamed base.
- The weightsThe printed page gives a quarter pound each of Crisco and butter, roughly half a cup apiece, one cup in all. Half a pound of sugar is a generous cup, ten ounces of flour about two and a quarter cups, and the citron a quarter pound.
- Slow ovenNo temperature is given; "slow" is conventionally read as somewhere around 300-325F. With this much sugar and dried fruit the outside will colour long before the centre sets, and a hotter oven gives you a burnt crust over raw middle.
- Bake time, which is not givenIn a paper-lined 8- or 9-inch round or a large loaf pan, allow roughly 1 3/4 to 2 1/2 hours in a slow oven. Test with a skewer in the centre and tent the top once the almonds are well browned.
- The split whitesHalf the beaten whites go in with the yolks and flour to loosen the batter; the rest are folded in at the very end. Fold the last half in gently — this cake has no chemical leavening, and the whites are all the lift it gets.
- CriscoThe hydrogenated shortening keeps the crumb tender; butter alone gives more flavour but a firmer result. Half and half, as written, is a sound compromise.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in tubs at Christmas or from baking suppliers. Chop it genuinely fine — large pieces sink through a batter this heavy. Candied orange or mixed peel substitutes without complaint.
- Lining the panLine base and sides with parchment standing an inch above the rim. Two hours in a slow oven with this much sugar will scorch anything touching bare metal.
- Yield and keepingAbout three pounds of cake, sixteen to twenty slices. Wrapped in parchment and foil it improves over a week and keeps a month in a tin.
Genoa cake is an English tea-table cake rather than an Italian one — the name is generally traced to the citron and almonds that came into Britain through Mediterranean trade, Genoa being a shipping point for candied peel. It sits in the same family as Dundee cake: a creamed pound-cake base carrying more fruit than flour, leavened only by eggs, and baked slow. Rich keeping cakes were the sternest test of a fat, since any rancidity would announce itself after a fortnight in the tin.