[Sca-cooks] Pork Fruitcake - Is This a Joke?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Johnna Holloway:
>It turns up in other places. Bob Allison who had a radio show
>includes it in his cookbook--
>http://www.askyourneighbor.com/cbook09.htm
>
>It's here also--
>http://www.recipesource.com/desserts/cakes/36/rec3602.html  salt 
>pork not fresh ground
>
>It's given as a very English recipe here--
>http://www.tngenweb.org/tntable/tabk42.html
>
>Pork Fruit Cake: One pound of pork, one cup of molasses, two cups 
>sugar, one pint boiling water, two eggs, cinnamon, cloves and all 
>spice, one tablespoon each, two teapoonfuls of cream tartar, one 
>teaspoon soda, one pound of raisins, chopped, flour to make it the 
>consistency of any stirred cake.  Chop the pork fine and turn on the 
>boiling water; let stand until no longer hot.  Bake very slow.  The 
>longer it is kept the better.  I have kept it six months and it was 
>moist and nice.
>Wouldn't it be fun to try some of these for an old fashioned family 
>reunion? appears under Just for fun... some 1800s recipes!
>http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/magazine/aprmay2003/snippets5.htm
>
>http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1832,157170-231197,00.html uses ground pork.
>
>We always cooked the meats that went into the mincemeat that then went into
>the fruitcake recipe that was my great great grandmothers. I don't 
>recall that pork
>was given as an option. Venison, beef, etc. were used.
>
>Fruitcake weather for me is always the fall with the mincemeat being 
>put up first.
>
>Johnnae

I'd say that if you were to replace the salt pork (probably fatty) 
with an equal mass of beef or veal suet, it would look very much like 
a standard 19th-century plum pudding recipe, and therefore, a pretty 
recognizable fruitcake recipe, too. This doesn't seem all that 
strange in that context.

Adamantius

>
>Elise Fleming wrote:
>
>>Greetings!  My daughter in San Francisco asked me about a Pork Fruitcake
>>recipe she'd found.  I said I'd ask if any of you had ever heard of such a
>>thing.  I wondered if it might have been based on mincemeat, although with
>>boiling coffee...!  The boiling liquid would do a little to help cook the
>>pork, but I wondered if such a low temperature even for two hours would
>>suffice to fully cook it.  Any comments?  Anyone want to try it??  FYI, I
>>will be unsubscribing (hopefully) by Tuesday.  I'll be in England for five
>>weeks!
>>
>>>From the cookbook "125 Years of Favorites Old and
>>New, Vasa Lutheran Church 1855-1980", a 621 page compendium by
>>Minnesotan Lutherans comes the treat Pork Fruit Cake. It's in the section
>>called Food with a Foreign Flair.
>>
>>Pork Fruit Cake by Carol Mitchener
>>
>>1.5 lb ground pork
>>Pour 3 cups boiling coffee over pork and stir.
>>
>>3 c brown sugar
>>2 lbs raisins
>>2 c nutmeats
>>1 lb currants
>>1 lb dates, cut fine(ly)
>>1 c citron
>>1 c lemon and orange peel
>>2 tsp soda
>>1 tsp allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt
>>6-7 c flour
>>
>>Put into 4 bread pans. Bake at 275 degrees for approximately 2 hours.
>>
>>Alys Katharine
>>
>>Elise Fleming
>>alysk at ix.netcom.com
>>http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/
>>
>>
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>>
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-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

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