| Recipe |
| • Traditional English Christmas Fruitcake • Dundee Cake • Panforte di Siena |
It is shocking that fruitcake, the icon of Christmas delights, receives so little respect, is heaped with scathing scorn, and is the object of barely funny derision given its long, noble lineage. What it has become bears little on where it came from.
A version of contemporary fruitcakes emerged in England in the 13th Century when the first dried fruits arrived from Portugal and the Mediterranean. Plum was the generic term for all dried fruits and so they were called Plum cakes. Fully half the weight of the cakes consisted of dried fruits.
Scarcity or abundance of ingredients often influences the desirability or ubiquity of a food or dish. When the price of sugar dropped, more fruitcake became available. When nuts proliferated they were generously added to the cake.
The fruitcake, in its many manifestations, became a cascade of sultanas, candied peel, glacéed cherries, dried fruits, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, or pecans. Often made in a brick-shaped loaf, inviting unfortunate comparisons, when made in a ring mould it can resemble a more appropriate bejeweled royal crown.
Not surprisingly for something that has existed for so long, many are the variations on a theme. For the Scots, the modern fruitcake’s progenitors include the Black Bun eaten at year’s end on Hogmanay since 16th century and later Dundee Cakes in the 19th century as a Christmas treat.
In Germany a similar loaf-shaped cake, Christstollen (today just stollen) is the fruitcake of the holiday. A version has been made since 1427 when it was present at the Saxon Royal court. Butter was added to the mix when the Pope Innocent VIII granted an exclusion from the tax on the use of butter for the Prince Elector and his family. The tariff to all others was 1/20 of a gold Gulden (a then monetary unit) payable to the fund to support the building of Friedberg Cathedral.
The closest the Italians have to a friut and nut confection is Paneforte, a specialty of Sienna, popular with Crusaders in the 13th century: a flattened disc made ridiculously decadent when chocolate is added. Tradition had it that there should be seventeen ingredients to commemorate the contrada or districts within the city of Sienna.
In England and Colonial America, the fruitcake was a celebratory cake as early as the 18th century and persists today as the bride’s cake (wrapped in marzipan) and as a Christmas tradition.
In the 19th century the estimable Mrs. Beeton set out to codify, simplify, rectify, and modify all of the activities of a proper Victorian household … including fruitcake.
In Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861, a monumental work of over one thousand pages, there are 1,877 numbered entries in the recipes section. For the first time recipes appeared in a format that became the standard: ingredient list, method, preparation time, cost and number of servings. The 25 year-old Missus was the first to provide more specific measurements, collect, test, and standardize every recipe, doing exhaustive background research on ingredients, food chemistry, farming and cooking methods. By any measure, it was an enormous success, selling over 60,000 copies in its first year.
Isabella never pretended expertise as a cook. Later detractors accused her of plagiarism, but for a few exceptions, she never claimed the recipes as her own. An extraordinary woman for her day (or any day), she said of her doorstopper, "I must frankly own that if I had known beforehand that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it".
We owe a token of gratitude to her, as we do Charles Dickens, for establishing the fantasy of Victorian England, and especially the Victorian Christmas, that persists in the minds and traditions that we still think we practice.
Of all the noble, real or imagined, Christmas traditions, none seems to have veered so far off the track than fruitcake. Pick up a sorry, leaden slice of garishly colored chunks of unrecognizable candied fruit mortared together by a cloying, grainy batter and it is hard to get past the first hesitant bite.
Perhaps the problem lies with commercial production. Harry & David have offered, for as long as memory recalls, a two pounder that has all the right elements and crown-like appeal. Eilen Berger (since 1898) should know fruitcake by now and makes a Texan turn by loading in pecans. Claxton Bakery (“choice of millions since 1910”) is another offering a loaf-shaped fruitcake. If you desire a more celestial and brandy based fruitcake, you have to visit the Trappist Monastery at the Holy Cross Abbey, where they have been doing God’s baking since 1950 at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Any of these will supply you with a fruitcake.
But to get snuggle up to authenticity you’ll have to bake your own. And it isn’t all that difficult. Maybe you should order on one line and make one at home and compare. It could be the after dinner amusement on Christmas day; just be prepared for all the tired jokes about fruitcake.
Recipes
The time has come to reinvigorate this fruit and nut compendium — the classic fruitcake. Don’t lose a minute. Soak your dried fruits in the best dark rum you can find. By the 15th of December, no later, bake your fruitcake. Cool it, soak it, store it a cool place. Douse it again, and once more before serving it on Christmas day to the delight of one and all. Make a traditional English fruitcake, or choose one of its cousins.
| Traditional English Christmas Fruitcake |
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Adapted from Isabella Beeton’s, "The Book Of Household Management"; 
1 cups butter, softened Butter and lightly flour a ring, bundt or loaf pan. Tap out excess flour. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Mix together well the flour, sugar, ginger, and drained raisins, and drained candied peel (save the rum for dousing). In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs until pale and fluffy. Mix in well the butter, cream, treacle, and beat the mixture for a few minutes. Dissolve the soda in the vinegar, add it to the dough until all are well incorporated with the others. Put the cake batter into a buttered mold or tin, place it in a 350ºF oven, and bake it from 1-3/4 to 2-1/4 hours until the tester comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Whilst still upside down poke holes in the cake with a skewer and douse liberally with dark rum or brandy. When cooled completely unmold and douse again. Wrap well in plastic wrap. In a few days unwrap and douse again. Re-wrap. The cake will keep well in part due to the alcohol. Slice and serve with dollops of whipped cream or eggnog ice cream. |
| Dundee Cake |
 1/2 lb butter, softened (extra for greasing) 1 lemon, grated zest 1 orange, grated zest 1 cup superfine sugar 1 cup raisins, soaked in dark rum 1 cup glacéed cherries, soaked in dark rum 1 cup currants, soaked in dark rum 1 cup golden raisins or sultanas, soaked in dark rum 2/3 cup candied peel, soaked in dark rum 2 1/2 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder pinch of salt 1 1/2 cup ground almonds, slightly packed 4 eggs 2 tbs dark rum or brandy 40 or so blanched almonds 2 tbs milk dark rum for “dousing” Pre-heat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease a 9” round cake pan and line with parchment or wax paper and grease again. Cream butter and sugar together until pale, light and fluffy. Add the lemon, orange zest and cream. Drain well and then put the raisins, glacéed cherries, currants, golden raisins/sultanas and mixed peel in a bowl. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt and add ½ cup to the dried fruits. Mix well so that the fruit is well coated to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake. Add ground almonds to the butter mixture and mix well. Gradually add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in half the remaining flour and then gradually add the fruit in small quantities at a time. Mixing in each addition well. Fold in the remaining flour and any of the fruit-coating flour left over. Stir in the brandy or rum. Spoon the mixture into the baking pan and smooth the surface. Dip blanched almonds in milk and arrange decoratively over the top of the cake. Bake at 325°F for 2-2 1/2 hours or until the tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, douse with dark rum while cooling. Turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. |
| Panforte di Siena |
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Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8” spring-form cake pan and line it with parchment paper. Spread hazelnuts and almonds on a baking sheet and toast them for 10 minutes at 325°F. Put the hazelnuts in a dishtowel and rub off the skins. Reduce the oven to 300°. Rough chop the nuts and place them in a large bowl. Drain (reserve the rum) well all the peel and dried fruits (drink reserved rum or vin santo as you work). Add candied peel apricots, pineapple and orange rind and mix well. Mix flour, cocoa, cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg and cloves together in a another bowl and add to fruit and nut mixture. In a heavy bottomed saucepan large enough to hold all of the ingredients, stir together the sugar and honey over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes until thickened and beginning to darken (do not over cook or the texture will be too hard). Remove the pan from the heat and fold in flour, fruit and nut mixture and blend well.
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Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.
Article photos from Dreamstime.com, "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.
