Sunday, November 2, 2008

Election Cake


In days of old, when men were men (and women, slaves, American Indians, immigrants, military personnel, paupers and the criminally insane were disenfranchised), voting was an arduous process, often involving a day’s journey or more to the closest polling place. Since there were no electioneering laws around to prevent it, a candidate or his representatives frequently assisted the undecided citizen with a little refreshment; hard cider (or corn whiskey in the South, and that’s the subject of a whole ‘nother post) and in New England at least, a slice of a sturdy, yeast-raised, fruit-filled confection called Election Cake.

The first printed appearance of Election Cake is in Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery, modestly subtitled The art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, vegetables and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to the plain cake: Adapted to this country and all grades of life. By an American orphan.

Mistress Simmons’ book is notable in that it is considered to be the first truly American cookbook, written by and for the cooks and comestibles of this country, and not a reprint of a British work. Her Election Cake must have been intended for an entire precinct. Here is the receipt from the 1796 edition:

Thirty quarts flour, 10 pound butter, 14 pound sugar, 12 pound raisins, 3 doz eggs, one pint wine, one quart brandy, 4 ounces cinnamon, 4 ounces fine colander seed, 3 ounces ground alspice; wet flour with milk to the consistence of bread over night, adding one quart yeast; the next morning work the butter and sugar together for half an hour, which will render the cake much lighter and whiter; when it has rise light work in every other ingredient except the plumbs, which work in when going into the oven.

Now this is the kind of sustenance fit for pioneers and revolutionaries! Between the thirty-six eggs, fourteen pounds of sugar and the quart and a half of booze, it must have been one hell of a cake.

Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cook Book offered a modernized version one hundred years later:

½ cup butter
1 cup bread dough
1 ½ cups flour
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon soda
1 cup sour milk
¼ teaspoon cloves
¼ teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
8 finely chopped figs
1 cup raisins, seeded
and cut in pieces
1 teaspoon salt

Work butter into dough, using the hand. Add egg well-beaten, sugar, milk, fruit dredged with two tablespoons flour, and flour mixed and sifted with remaining ingredients. Put into a well-buttered bread pan, cover and let rise one and one-fourth hours. Bake one hour in a slow oven. Cover with Boiled Milk Frosting.


A paltry, puny, nimminy-pimminy milk- and-water counterfeit of its ancestor with not even a whiff of wine or brandy. Faugh.

(For a visit with some of our foremothers’ other recipes, visit the Michigan State University Library’s website, Feeding America).

6 comments:

Erre54 said...

hi ..
but where do you found all these beautiful imagines? I love them so much
ciao dall'italia
MRita
excuse for my english

Unknown said...

Wow, election cake. I had never heard of it until this post! WOuldn't it be fabulous to have an election party and serve it...depending on how good it is, LOL! None of my friends are terribly politically inclined, sadly!

Shay said...

Erre: tutto imagi senza accreditamento es di Dover. Possedero questa CD:

http://store.doverpublications.com/048699970x.html

Registrate acqi~

http://www.doverpublications.com/sampler4/

et Dovver envieranno un email con imagi, gratuito, tutto settimana! Como se dice "copyright free?"

(My Italian is terrible isn't it! My brain keeps trying to switch to French).

Amy said...

I was thinking 30 quarts of flour, doesn't that sound like an awfully big cake or have I got my measurements wrong?

Erre54 said...

hi Shay
thanks for your informations,I understand all
copryright free = diritto d'autore libero

for japanese picture ,you must go here
http://www.chino-china.com/nombres

on my blog I put my name in japanese language
a presto
Erre

Shay said...

Amy -- a lot of baking recipes from the 18th and early 19th century assume that you know they're talking about a dozen or so loaves or cakes. This one has to fall into that category...can you imagine the size of the pan required to bake this?