The Laboratorium : The American Frugal Housewife Good Common Wedding Cake

From Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, p. 72:

Good common wedding cake may be made thus: Four pounds of flour, three pounds of butter, three pounds of sugar, four pounds of currants, two pounds of raisins, twenty-four eggs, half a pint of brandy, or lemon-brandy, one ounce of mace, and three nutmegs. A little molasses makes it dark colored, which is desirable. Half a pound of citron improves it; but it is not necessary. To be baked two hours and a half, or three hours. After the oven is cleared, it is well to shut the door for eight or ten minutes, to let the violence of the heat subside, before cake or bread is put in.

To make icing for your wedding cake, beat the whites of eggs to an entire froth, and to each egg add five teaspoonfuls of sifted loaf sugar, gradually; beat it a great while. Put it on when your cake is hot, or cold, as is most convenient. It will dry in a warm room, a short distance from a gentle fire, or in a warm oven.

Repeat after me: four pounds of currants?

March 17, 2007 at 11:16 PM

Jan

This is a recipe for a very large, very dense fruitcake, and, hence, the four pounds of currants are no more remarkable than the two dozen eggs or the three pounds of sugar. Unless, of course, you dislike currants, in which case four pounds of them would be pretty gross. Note, too, no temperature is given: The cake would have been baked in the oven inside a fireplace, making regulation of the heat with any precision quite impossible.