A Long Winter’s Night – Holiday Density
Posted By Randy on December 22, 2012
A fruit cake fit for a king … or at least an heir to the throne.
“The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” ~ Johnny Carson
Here in Canada, fruitcake is a staple of this season, less often eaten as a dessert than as a point in itself. Much maligned by its detractors, I feel a very personal affinity for it because, like me, it wears its age well, and people either love it or hate it, finding no middle ground of indifference.
Legend has it that the origins of fruitcake lie back in the antiquity that was ancient Egypt where it was placed in tombs with the dead to feed them in the afterlife. Recipes have come down to us from the days of the Roman Empire, but we owe the staple ingredient of our modern fruitcake – candied fruit – to the medieval discovery that saturation with sugar acts as a preservative. Couple that with nuts and raisins soaked for weeks in rum or brandy, and what’s not to love?
I like fruitcake. I also like marinated herring, Danish blue cheese, scotch whisky, anchovies, the smell of a good cigar being smoked – even though I don’t smoke myself, and Peter Thompson. That they are all acquired tastes does not diminish the fact that my sensibilities are in some way gladdened by each of them, in spite of my propensity to swear at Thompson as often as by him, and in truth, my liking for a thing that is best when soaked at length in fine spirits, and is dense enough stop a bullet, has some interesting parallels to our friendship.
While the world oooo’d and ahhhhhh’d over the spectacle that was the 29 April 2011 wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton, it somehow got lost on many that the Royal Cake – designed and made by Fiona Cairns, and depicted in all its splendour at the top of this article – was built of fruitcake. All eight tiers of it.
Interestingly, it appears the wedding bed was still warm when on 24 May 2012, for the sum of £1918, purveyors of “world class art, antiques, and collectibles” PFC Auctions sold Lot 125, described thus:
A slice of cake from the wedding of Prince William (1982- ) and Kate Middleton (1982- ) with a printed compliments slip from TRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall.
The cake was designed by Fiona Cairns for the Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on Friday 29th April 2011 and is in a presentation tin commissioned and designed by Peter Windett and Sally Mangum. The tin measures 5½” x 4¼ x 2”.
A slice of cake was presented to each of the 650 close friends and family who attended the afternoon reception at Buckingham Palace.
Accompanied by the 16 page Order of Service from Westminster Abbey which includes the vows, hymns, prayers and Blessing from the Wedding.
Believed to be the first piece of William and Kate’s wedding cake to appear at auction.
In fine condition.
I think this speaks less to the quality of the cake than it does to the Great Truth that intelligence and a large disposable income rarely travel in the same commemorative tin, and I can’t help but wonder at what it might imply about how one, “… of the 650 close friends and family ….” feels about fruitcake – Bastard – but I’m sure things would have been different if the boxes had been serially numbered and assigned by name.
My love of fruitcake notwithstanding, I still enjoy a well crafted assault. A case in point is The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project that openly brands fruitcake a biohazard, attempts to derive at least some credibility from quoting Charles Dickens in saying, “A fruitcake is a geological homemade cake,” and supports its argument with such statistics as, “Each recycled fruitcake circumnavigates the globe an average of 27 times before it ends up in the hands of someone who will actually eat it. Aficionados call this “aging” and claim it enhances the flavor.” and “The ancient Egyptians considered fruitcake an essential food for the afterlife. When interviewed, most Americans agreed, stating that they, too, would rather die before eating it.”
Fruitcake wears the LFM stamp of approval. Long may it wave, and hopefully, this item has fanned the flames of fruitcake craving in you, good readers. I know it has for us, and so Mrs. LFM and I are off in search of one, preferably with marzipan icing – another thing for which much hate inexplicably exists in the land.
I’ve always had a bias toward it because of its reputation for being old, etc. But I’d be willing to give it another try sometime.
Gary, as you know, we LFM’s enjoy seasonal foods of a rustic and/or culturally historic nature. So it is with fruitcake and its relatives – plum pudding for example. Things that come from times when there was no such thing as bleached flour – as unfortunately there is now – and people hadn’t yet begun processing all the nutrients out it to the point where they had to be re-added in the making process to create so called “enriched white bread”. Before the meat of wild game was considered suspect and potentially unhealthy because it hadn’t been raised, slaughtered, and processed under the all knowing eye of a government food inspector.
There are a lot of recipes for what is generally called fruitcake – some yielding a darker product, others lighter – and they vary geographically. Here in Canada there are often family recipes, the best of which require starting many weeks and sometimes up to three months in advance with marinating the fruit in rum or brandy. Like pickling and smoking, in the days before refrigeration, saturation with sugar and alcohol was a sure way to preserve food.
As I said in the article, fruitcake here is a seasonal thing, and stores stock it pretty much exclusively at this time of year. I’d be surprised if you can’t find it where you are, at least until the new year, and I recommend giving it a try. Have a slice with a cup of Earl Grey. If you aren’t so equipped, get some of that while you’re at it.
The first bullet proof vest for sure! and I am further Honored by the cussing of and in liken manner to the man that honored me so! Scotch is the center of many a noble , though provoking , sincere arguments that always end well! I will always be by your side and cover your back in any Frey. Yours Randy , and Diana Friend truly.
Peter
[…] the subject of that famous Christmas confection called fruitcake, Johnny Carson once said, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the […]
I like fruitcake and can keep the gift of one on the pantry shelf for at least two to three .. months.
I like fruitcake and can keep the gift of one on the pantry shelf for at least two to three .. months.
How you come up with these goodies is amazing