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Steamed Fruit Cake
One pound of flour, one pound butter, one pound brown sugar, three pounds seeded raisins, one pound currants, one pound shredded figs, one pound citron, twelve eggs, three teaspoonfuls of nutmeg, one teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, one-half teaspoonful ground cloves, one-half teaspoonful each of allspice and mace, one pint peach preserves, one pound Brazil nuts; one tumblerful of water, one tumblerful pickled blackberry juice, one teaspoonful soda, one-half pound candied orange peel. Steam three hours; dry off in the oven. Very fine.
This is a full holiday-scale fruit cake — roughly thirteen pounds of batter and fruit before the eggs go in. The original assumes you know how to build a creamed cake and gives you only the steaming time, so most of the work of translation is in the handling.
- The hinge: the soda needs the acidThere is no baking powder here. The single teaspoon of soda is meant to react with the pickled blackberry juice — the sweet-spiced vinegar syrup drained off a jar of pickled blackberries. Dissolve the soda in the tumbler of water and add it last, with the fruit already floured, or you lose the lift before the cake reaches the steamer.
- Pickled blackberry juiceBlackberries put up in sugar, vinegar and warm spice appear in period preserving books; the juice is the syrup drained off the jar. If you have no jar of it, unsweetened blackberry juice with about two tablespoons of cider vinegar per cup will approximate the acidity and tartness.
- A tumblerfulA tumbler was an informal measure, commonly reckoned at about half a pint, so read each as roughly 8 fl oz. That gives about two cups of added liquid against a pound of flour, on top of a pint of peach preserves; the fruit absorbs a great deal of it.
- Citron and candied peelCandied citron in American baking of this era was usually the peel of the citrus fruit, though candied citron melon was used as a cheaper substitute. Buy it in the piece and dice it yourself if you can; pre-chopped mixed peel is drier and tastes mostly of sugar.
- Flour the fruitSeven and a half pounds of dried fruit and nuts to one pound of flour is a very high ratio even for a fruit cake. Toss the raisins, currants, figs, citron, peel and roughly chopped Brazil nuts with a few spoonfuls of the measured flour so the batter has something to cling to.
- Steaming vesselDivide the batter among two or three well-greased, paper-lined tins or pudding moulds, cover each tightly with greased foil or a floured cloth tied down, and set them on a rack over simmering water. Three hours applies to a single large mould; smaller tins will be done sooner, and the water needs topping up from the kettle.
- Drying off in the ovenSteamed cake comes out damp on the surface. The recipe gives no temperature or time for this step; uncover and give it a spell in a low oven until the top is dry to the touch and a skewer comes out clean.
- Yield and keepingExpect somewhere near twelve pounds of finished cake. Wrapped in cloth and stored airtight in a cool place it keeps well; the sugar, acid and fruit do the preserving.
Steaming was an old way to cook a rich fruit cake, related to the boiled plum puddings of British tradition, and it persisted in American books alongside baking because a moist, gentle heat suits a batter this heavy with fruit. The pantry it draws on reads as American: peach preserves, pickled blackberry juice, Brazil nuts, candied citron and orange peel. The pickled-fruit syrup doing double duty as flavouring and as the acid for the soda is a neat piece of thrift.