Plain Pound or Currant Cake (Or rich Brawn Brack or Borrow Brack)

Instructions

1. Mix, as directed in the foregoing receipt, ten eggs (some cooks take a pound in weight of these), one pound of sugar, one of flour, and as much of butter.
2. For a plum-cake, let the butter be worked to a cream; add the sugar to it first, then the yolks of the eggs, next stir lightly in the whites.
3. After which add one pound of currants and the candied peel, and, last of all, the flour by degrees, and a glass of brandy when it is liked.
4. Time: nearly or quite two hours' baking will be required for this, and one hour for half the quantity.
5. To convert the above into the popular Irish 'speckled bread', or Brawn Brack of the richer kind, add to it three ounces of carraway-seeds: these are sometimes used in combination with the currants, but more commonly without.
6. To ice a cake see the receipt for Sugar Glazings at the commencement of this Chapter, page 543. A rose-tint may be given to the icing with a little prepared cochineal, as she has said there.