Fruit Cake

History

This fruit cake is recipe No. 65 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking," published in San Francisco in 1881 under the name of Abby Fisher. Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She could neither read nor write, having had no schooling, and the recipes were set down at her dictation — as the book's own preface explains, the writing "would devolve" on others because she and her husband were "without the advantages of an education." Her book is the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States, after Malinda Russell's "Domestic Cook Book" (1866). Fisher won a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879 and two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880 for her pickles, sauces, jellies, and preserves.

The cake itself is rich and heavily spiced: a pound each of browned flour, sliced citron, raisins, and washed currants, with chopped almonds, cinnamon, mace, allspice, and ground cloves, bound with a pint of black molasses, a wineglass of brandy, butter, sugar, and a dozen eggs whose whites and "yelks" are beaten separately before being added to the cake.

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular recipe. It is preserved as Abby Fisher dictated it into her own book — an expression of the Southern cooking she mastered — and the record does not support attaching it to any single national or medieval European lineage.

Ingredients

• 1 pound flour
• 1 pound citron
• 1 pound raisins
• 1 pound currants
• 1 teacup almonds
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon mace
• 1 tablespoon allspice
• ½ teaspoon cloves
• 1 pint black molasses
• 1 wineglass brandy
• 1 pound butter
• 1 pound sugar
• 1 dozen eggs

Instructions

1. Sift the flour and brown it in the stove.
2. Slice the citron into very small pieces.
3. Cut the raisins into small pieces.
4. Wash the currants well and dry them with a clean towel.
5. Chop the almonds fine.
6. Combine all dry ingredients: the browned flour, citron, raisins, currants, almonds, powdered cinnamon, mace, allspice, and ground cloves.
7. Strain the black molasses before using.
8. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until light.
9. Add the beaten eggs to the cake mixture along with the butter, sugar, and brandy.