Christmas Cake

Christmas Cake

Godey's Lady's Book 1862

Sometimes recipes were in written as verses.

 

Victorian Christmas Cake

 

To two pounds of flour, well sifted, unite

Of loaf-sugar, ounces sixteen;

Two pounds of fresh butter, with eighteen fine eggs,

And four pounds of currants washed and clean;

Eight ounces of almonds well blanched and cut small,

The same weight of citron sliced;

Of orange and lemon-peal candied one pound,

And a gill of pale brandy uniced;

A large nutmeg grated:exact half an ounce

Of allspice, but only a quarter

Of mace, coriander, and ginger well ground,

Or pounded to dust in a mortar,

An important addition is cinnamon, which

Is better increased than diminished;

The fourth of an ounce is sufficient.  Now this

May be baked for good hours till finished.

Makes about 24 lbs.

Victorian cooking and kitchens

Victorian cooking

In the Victorian Era, like today, ladies magazines were popular, and like today, readers sent in their favorite recipies.   

Godey's Lady's Book, the most popular woman's magazine in the nineeenth century, was published in America in some form for sixty eight years, from 1830 to 1898.  

In the Victorian era, most foods were kept by smoking, pickling, or kept in cool basements or suspended in the well. 

It was not unusual in rural houses to see the rafters hung with legs of beef, mutton, and hams.  The meats were hung inside the chimneys to perserve them by smoking.