Gleaner archives
December 22, 1971
One of the most favoured delicacies of the holiday season is the fruitcake.
Many a loving homemaker will start months in advance and make the cake from an old family recipe, wrap it in rum – or brandy soaked – cloth and store it until the Great Days come.
Most of us envision a dark red-brown cake so filled with fruit and nuts that it can hardly be cut… so aromatic with spirits that we could stand over it all day and ‘drink in’ its redolence.
However, the term “good fruitcake” has as many variations as the singers of its praises.
Such discrepancies arise, says an expert in bakers’ matters, “because no one appears to have decided exactly what constitutes fruitcake.” Not even a super-fussy Department of Agriculture of a certain state has attempted to define the delicacy.
It’s not difficult to see why. Over the years, fruitcake has had as many recipes as eaters. To the ancient Romans, according to a well-known cookbook, it was Satura, a mixture of a well-known barley mash, dried raisins, pine kernels and pomegranate seeds “laced with condiments and honeyed wine.”
To Elizabeth of England, it was spice cake, containing, according to a recipe of the time, “good ale barme… eight eggs with two yelkes… aniseedes bruised… (and) a little rose water.”
Most modern recipes appear to descend from the old Pennsylvania Dutch cake and British plum pudding cake. The latter was notable for its considerable brandy content, an ingredient missing from many commercial products.