[Sca-cooks] One of the original fruitcakes has been admitted to ; -)
Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius at verizon.net
Tue Dec 23 03:50:28 PST 2003
Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>What is "Irish Porter" cake? I've never heard of it before. It
>sounds like a fruitcake though from your description, although with
>a different liquor.
Different from what? Irish Porter Cake (as opposed to French or
Zimbabweian Porter Cake) is an Irish cake made with Porter, which is
a dark, medium-strength ale. I posted a recipe last night. It also
contains dried fruit, plus candied peel, among other ingredients.
> I didn't think fruitcake required a specific type of fruit.
I don't think so either, but I'd say the range is relatively narrow.
Usually they're dried fruits that might otherwise be, or once have
been, fairly exotic for the kinds of places where fruitcake is
traditional. So, while England has fruits like apples, pears, and
strawberries available locally, the dried fruits used in fruitcakes
there tend to be dates, figs, raisins and currants (yes, they also
have currants, but the fresh currants are different from the dried
currants they import).
Apples often make it into a Christmas or "plum" pudding (which
usually contains no form of plums, and may be a corruption of the
word "plump"), but they're generally included in fresh form, chopped
or grated to variegate texture. Plum pudding is basically only a
steamed fruitcake anyway (and yet hasn't got quite the awful
reputation of fruitcake).
After reading through several people's impressions and ideas, I'm
beginning to get the idea (sort of like being hit with a window sash
weight wrapped in a towel gives one ideas ;-) ) that many Americans
don't like fruitcake because of 1) its heterogeneous texture, 2) the
nature of the fruit itself, sometimes preserved beyond recognition,
3) its dark color (which we normally reserve for chocolate products
and steaks), and 4) the booze.
I tend to think of 1 and 4 as good things, and 2 and 3 as eminently fixable.
Adamantius
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