Another 5 Ways To Save Eggs, Not In This Cookbook:1. Don't push the eggs off the table with your hand, while posing for cookbook cover.
2. Make fudge or popcorn balls instead of cake.
3. Make a cake that uses only one egg.
4. Have oatmeal for breakfast.
5. Look in icebox, see eggs. Decide not to use any! There you go, eggs saved.
Here's a cake that uses only one of those 55 eggs that you have saved. It is called Mrs. Schulenburg's German Cake and is from Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving by Mrs. Mary F. Henderson, 1876]:
Ingredients: One pound of flour, three-quarters of a cup of butter, six ounces of sugar, one egg, half a cupful of rum. Bake in a pie pan, pressing the cake until it is about one-quarter of an inch high. Before baking, sprinkle sugar and ground cinnamon on top; after it is baked, cut it into squares while it is yet warm. [This sounds more like a big cookie, really - a big cookie full of rum!]
Victorian cakes often had a lavish amount of eggs in them - not quite 55, but six or more. If you wanted a more traditional Victorian cake, Mrs. Henderson's English Pound-cake required ten eggs (for one cake!). And then there was Miss Carpenter's Perpetual Fruit Cake. I have renamed it Perpetual Fruit Cake, in honor of Mrs. Henderson's editorial comment at the end of the recipe:Perpetual Fruit Cake (Miss Abbie Carpenter, of Saratoga)
Ingredients: One pound of flour, one pound of sugar, one and one-eighth pounds of butter, one half-pound of candied citron, four pounds of currants, four pounds of raisins (stoned and chopped), nine eggs, one table-spoonful each of ground cloves, of cinnamon, of mace, and of nutmeg, and three gills of brandy.
This cake is not perhaps too large, as it will keep for years.
I suspect that Miss Carpenter had had one of these cakes for decades - and it probably really was too large.
The picture above is the cover of a 1917 Royal Baking Powder cookbook, from Duke University's Emergence of Advertising in America. Fruit Cake cigarette card from NYPL Digital Gallery.
11 comments:
Not sure if this will be of interest - but you can get a cookbook written by Marguerite Patten OBE. It is of recipes devised for War Time Britain - it is a wonderful book - not only full of recipies but also of facts for the period between 1940 and 1954. The book is called Victory Cookbook by Chancellor Press.ISBN 0 7537 0683 0 ALSO ISBN 13 9 780753 706831
The book is also full of funny quips, etc and just to wet your apetite - although you may have heard this one before - here is one of the little quips: "I used to think one didn't oughter Make a soup from vegetable water. But this, my dear - this IS a snorter!"
:)
I love your articles here....
That is too funny. Thanks so much for the laugh.
I'm weird but I really like Fruit cake...the recipe you've published, with things measured in POUNDS is a little scary though...What is a "Gill of brandy" a little? a lot? I haven't a clue....
Yep, I've come across recipes calling for the better part of a dozen eggs sometimes!
Oh the Days of Old...when we cooked for stomach fullness,lol. My dad really likes the Days of old fruitcakes. Only without the rum or brandy, just the fruit and lots of it. you know the kind "door stop cake". Thought the photo of pushing eggs was funny.
Kloggers/Polly - That sounds brilliant, thank you! Will put it on my list.
grouse and badger - My pleasure :) I will do some more like this down the road.
Will Oaks Studio - I actually like fruit cake too, especially the English 'everyday' fruit cake which is fairly light. A gill was 5 ounces, so not a lot compared to all the pounds of other things. But still.
Jayne - Yes, they surely liked their eggs! :)
Auntie E - I wanted to find an old fruitcake-joke picture for this one, but maybe I will locate one for a Christmas time post! :)
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This must be the kind of fruitcake that people joke about. Anything that lasts that long just can't be good! www.satisfiedsole.com
Pam - You know, I was wondering if Mrs. Henderson wasn't making the first fruit cake joke in print, with that last sentence! :)
That German cake must have been dense! There isn't a lot of moisture in it. Not even two full sticks of butter, 1/2 cup of rum isn't much and one egg, compared to 2 cups of flour. I may have to try it, lol.
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Norkio - I'll bet it was dense too - like a doorstop with rum.
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