Merry Christmas!

                                  Fruitcake

       What’s up with all the fruitcake jokes? Personally, I love fruitcake. But most people seem to think it should be sent as a gag gift to family, friends, and/or foe.  If the Postal Service, FedEx, or DHL delivered a fruitcake to the Nord residence, it would be eaten before the New Year. A hefty slice of fruitcake in the morning with your cup of coffee, ice tea, or soda (if you take your caffeine cold), and you’ve already started your day with all six major food groups. Just think about it. The average slice of cake has an assortment of dried or candied fruit such as peaches, apricots, pears, pineapple, cherries, raisins, etc, therefore providing your fruit for the day. The variety of nuts, usually pecans, almonds, walnuts, along with the eggs, boosts your protein intake off to a good start. Although the ratio of fruit and nuts to batter is fairly high, the flour mixture along with a few spices has furnished you with the grain category. When you add liquid such as melted butter and whipping cream or buttermilk, the dairy group is taken care of. With sugar, honey, corn syrup and/or molasses you have reached the top of the food pyramid, which will supply you with a sugar fix lasting all day. Okay, I know your thinking that I left out the vegetable group. Well, not exactly. The pan needs to be heavily coated with vegetable oil before the batter is poured. If not, that conglomeration would never fall out in a nice round shape. And last, but not least, don’t forget the liquor that’s been used to saturate the fruitcake. Most recipes call for bourbon or rum, but I know several of my Tennessee relatives add Jack Daniel’s Whiskey or homemade moonshine.

       The history of fruitcake dates back to Roman times then the recipe included pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into a barley mash. Then, in the middle ages, people added honey, spices, and preserved fruit. Crusaders and hunters were reported to have carried this type of cake to feed themselves over long periods of time while away from home. In the 1700’s, the Europeans closely related their love affair with fruitcake around the nut harvests. After the completed harvest, they mixed a whole bunch of nuts from the harvest together and made a fruitcake they saved until the next year. That next year, they ate the old fruitcake, hoping it would bring them another successful harvest. How fruitcake has grown to be related to the holidays, no one really knows. It most likely came from the English, who passed out slices of cake to poor women who sang Christmas carols in the street during the late 1700’s. It is known that during the early 18^th century fruitcake was outlawed entirely throughout Continental Europe. These cakes were considered as “sinfully rich.” By the end of the 18^th century there were laws restricting the use of plum cake (plum being the generic word for dried fruit at the time), to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals. Today, it remains a custom in England for an unmarried wedding guest to put a slice of fruitcake under their pillow at night so they will dream of the person they wish to marry.

      Searching the web for longevity claims of fruitcake, I came across “Fruitcake is Forever” by Russell Baker, New York Times, December 25, 1983, Section 6, (p.10).  

“Thirty-four years ago, I inherited the family fruitcake. Fruitcake is the only food durable enough to become a family heirloom. It had been in my grandmother’s possession since 1880, and passed it to a niece in 1933. Surprisingly, the niece, who had always seemed to detest me, left it to me in her will…I would have renounced my inheritance except for the sentiment of the thing, for the family fruitcake was the symbol of our family’s roots.

When my grandmother inherited it, it was already 86 years old, having been baked by her great-grandfather in 1794 as a Christmas gift for President George Washington. Washington, with his high-flown view of ethical standards for Government workers, sent it back with thanks, explaining that he thought it unseemly for Presidents to accept gifts weighting more than 80 pounds, even though they were only eight inches in diameter…There is no doubt…about the fruitcake’s great age. Sawing into it six Christmas’s ago, I came across a fragment of a 1794 newspaper with an account of the lynching of a real-estate speculator in New York City.”

       Charles Dickens said, “A fruitcake is a geological homemade cake.” Okay, I’ll buy that, considering the oldest fruitcake company in the United States is the Collin Street Bakery, in Corsicana, Texas (1896).