[Sca-cooks] One of the original fruitcakes has been admitted to ; -)

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

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