It's my wedding!
Finally this Friday after a very long postponement I'm getting married,
and to celebrate I've decided to make a wedding cake from 1769.
So let us celebrate my upcoming nuptials, or
nup-chills, nuptials however you say it.
My upcoming wedding with cake this time on Tasting History.
So yeah just a few days after I post this it's Tuesday when I post getting married on Friday.
I am having a wedding and if you want to follow that, the modern cake, the food, the flowers,
all all that kind of stuff make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller
I'll be posting the whole time.
Now as I am a groom I figured that I would make groom cake which was a traditional cake made for the groom.
It was popular in the 19th century in parts of England and parts of
mostly the southern part of the United States but turns out
it's basically the same as wedding cakes from that time period, except without icing because
icing is not masculine I guess but I like icing so
I'm just making a wedding cake.
It's from Elizabeth Raffald 'The Experienced English Housekeeper' from 1769.
And usually here I would read the recipe but it is really, really long like
pages long so I'm actually going to put the whole thing in the description if you want to read it,
but here is an abbreviated version to give you an idea of what we're going to be using and the size of this cake.
"To make a Bride Cake. Take four pounds of fine flour well dried,
four pounds of fresh butter, two pounds of loaf sugar, pound and sift fine, a quarter ounce of mace
and the same of nutmegs. To every pound of flour put eight eggs, wash four pounds of currants,
pick them well and dry them before the fire, blanch a pound of sweet almonds, and cut them lengthwise very thin,
a pound of citron, one pound of candied orange, the same of candied lemon, half a pint of brandy."
The recipe goes on to explain how then to make this cake as well as its famous double icing
which is one layer of like a thick almond icing and then another layer of a white sugar icing.
But recall the quantities mentioned. This cake is fit for a hundred people.
What it is not fit for is my modern oven.
So I'm going to be reducing the size quite a bit to just a very large cake
instead of the obscenely large cake of the 18th century.
So for this recipe what you'll need is:
4 cups or 450 grams of flour, 2 cups or 450 grams of unsalted butter.
By the way in these old recipes you can often tell if it's supposed to be unsalted because it will specify
fresh butter. If it's not fresh then they would have had to add a lot of salt.
One and a quarter cup or 225 grams light brown sugar, one teaspoon ground mace, one teaspoon ground nutmeg,
a half teaspoon of salt, six large eggs separated, three and a half cups or 450 grams of dried currants.
These would be currants of Corinth, or xante currants as we call them here in the United States
rather than red currants. That said if you want to use red currants and have dried red currants
you can use those, but that's not what they were talking about.
One cup or 130 grams blanched almond slivers, a half cup or 115 grams citron,
a half cup or 115 grams of candied orange peel, a half cup or 115 grams of candied lemon peel,
and 1/3 cup or 75 milliliters of brandy.
So first preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or 150 Celsius, then line a 9 inch springform pan with parchment.
Now in the book she actually calls for this cake to be baked in what is called a garth,
which is a giant wooden hoop and I'm actually having one made but it is not ready for this episode unfortunately,
but in the future once I get it i'm going to try using it so something to look forward to.
But for today in a way to mimic the effects of wood rather than metal
you can actually take a strip of parchment and wrap it and tie it around the outside of the cake pan.
It makes it so the sides don't dry out. I don't know how it works but it does.
Now onto the cake. Sift the flour into a bowl and then whisk in the mace, the nutmeg, and the salt.
Then in a separate bowl beat the butter until smooth. Then cream the butter and sugar together until nice and fluffy.
In yet another bowl beat the egg yolks until a pale yellow,
and in one more bowl beat the egg whites until you achieve stiff peaks.
You have to use so many bowls to make this cake. I really feel sorry for whoever has to clean my kitchen.
It's me.
Add the yolks a little at a time into the butter and sugar and mix until incorporated.
Then add the brandy and mix again.
Then slowly add the flour and spice mixture gently mixing until just incorporated.
Fold in the egg whites until there are no streaks. Then finally add the almonds and currants and gently mix until incorporated
trying not to knock too much air out of the batter. Then mix all of the candied peel together
and spoon one fourth of the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle a third of the candied peel mix,
or sweet meats as she calls them, on top. Then repeat this with the batter and the peel,
the batter and the peel, until you have four layers of batter and three of peel.
Then set the cake in the oven and bake for two hours or until a wooden skewer inserted comes out clean.
Then let it cool for 10 minutes before removing it from the tin to let it cool completely.
Then transfer to a lined baking sheet. Now on to the icing, both of them.
For the almond icing what you'll need is: 2 egg whites, 1 cup or 225 grams of ground almonds or almond flour,
1 cup or 225 grams of bakers or caster sugar, and 1 tablespoon of rose water.
Then in a large bowl, I think we're up to 5 now, whisk together the almonds and the sugar and then whisk in the rose water.
In another bowl beat the egg white until you get stiff peaks.
Then slowly beat the almond mixture into the egg white until incorporated.
It should form a paste but if it doesn't hold together beat another half egg white and add that in.
Then turn the almond icing out onto a piece of parchment,
cover with another piece and roll out a disc large enough to cover the top of the cake.
Then set the cake which is on the baking sheet back into the oven but this time at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for
about 10 minutes or until the top starts to brown.
Now we have a whole other icing to make but before we do lets take a look at the regal
and sometimes downright disgusting history of wedding cakes.
It's really hard to find out when the first wedding cakes were around.
There are sources that talk about barley cakes being made for weddings in ancient Greece and ancient Rome
where they would be smashed up against the bride or like up against the back of her head,
but most of these sources are from the Victorians who just loved making up history so
we kind of got to take it with a grain of salt.
No, the first real evidence that we have for something like a wedding cake
would be something that's actually more like a wedding bread,
and it comes from around the year 1500 in a document called "For To Make A Feast For A Bride."
We get a lengthy menu with subtleties or sugar sculptures that are inscribed with lines from the Bible.
Then in the fourth course it calls for "Payne puff, cheese, bread hot, with a cake, and a wife lying in child bed."
It's unclear if this wife lying in bed is a cake or bread, or if it's another sugar sculpture but it comes with a little
poem inscribed in it probably from the child's point of view.
"I am coming toward your bride. If you dare look at me once, I think you must."
Which I take to mean just one look at your bride and you're gonna have a baby on the way but I'm not entirely sure.
Either way these little cakes were sweet bread rolls that were stacked up high into a pile.
And "I have seen, according to the custom then, the Bride and Bride-groom kiss over the Bride-cakes at the Table:
it was about the latter end of dinner and the cakes were laid one upon another like the picture of the showbread in the old Bibles."
Though while some ate bread others opted for a bride pie on their wedding day.
In 1596 Thomas Dawson wrote a recipe for
"To make a tart that is a courage to a man or woman."
It had quinces and potatoes, dates, eggs, sugar, spices but it also called for
"The brains of three or four cocke sparrows."
Which I suppose was the ingredient meant to give courage to a man or a woman.
Though a century later instead of giving courage it would simply take courage
to down Robert May's Fear Factor-worthy bride pie that he lays out in 'The Accomplished Cook'.
Among other things it calls for oysters, scallops, bone marrow, lamb testicle, and cocks comb.
And just like the breads were stacked so were these pies into tiers sort of like a tiered wedding cake.
Though one of the pies in the stack was not for eating, but
"to pass away the time."
And it does that by having the baker "Put in live birds, or a snake, which will seem strange to the beholders,
which cut up the pie at the Table."
I'm not going to beat around the bush the man was clearly a psychopath.
Can you imagine cutting into a pie and a snake slithers out.
And now you can see why I did not opt for any of these earlier recipes.
The next recipe is also off the table but at least it is a recipe for a proper cake. In fact it's probably the first recipe for a cake
meant to be served at a wedding specifically "The Countess of Rutlands Rceipt for making the rare Banbury Cake,
which was so much praised at her daughter's wedding."
It appears in 'The Complete Cook' by Rebecca Price in the 1680s and it really starts to look more like the fruitcake that we're making today,
but it has two ingredients that I am unable to procure here in the US.
First, musk which in an edible form is pretty hard to find here,
though I guess they do have it in Australia where they use it to make candy.
And the second is ambergris which is illegal to possess here in the US
because it comes from sperm whales, specifically from their intestines.
Not your typical Banbury cake ingredients today
but it was probably one of these types of cakes that Robert Herrick wrote about in his 1648 poem 'The Bride Cake'.
"This day my Julia thou must make for mistress bride, the wedding cake:
knead but the dough and it will be to paste of almonds turned by thee or kiss it thou but once or twice,
and for the Bride Cake there will be spice."
I don't think I'm gonna kiss my cake that would that would be weird.
Also there's a fly in here so if you see him passing in front of me-
it's really weird. My cats are clearly not doing their job. Anyway!
It was probably these types of cakes that eventually turned into the one that we're making today,
and they were most often served at wedding breakfasts, and a reminiscence of the wedding breakfast of Anna Austin,
Jane Austen's niece in 1814 mentions this
"The breakfast was such as best breakfasts were then.
Some variety of bread, hot rolls, buttered toast, tongue, ham and eggs."
The addition of chocolate at one end of the table and the wedding cake in the middle marked the speciality of the day."
Side note just two years into her marriage Anna and her husband Benjamin Lefroy already had two children
which prompted her aunt Jane Austen to write "Poor animal she will be worn out before she is thirty."
I want Jane Austen as my aunt so she can write little quips about my life too.
Now these cakes just like the one that we're making today tended to be white partly as a
symbol of virginity, but also partly as a sign of your wealth because to make a white icing you had
to have pure white sugar which in the early 19th century was very, very expensive.
It was also in the early 19th century that we start to see some really fancy sugar work applied to the cakes or
made into a bride and groom mold that would be set on top of the cake.
One of the most famous wedding cakes in history had such a detail.
In 1840 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had
"a great beast of a plum-cake... It weighed 300 pounds, was three yards in circumference and fourteen inches in depth.
On the top was a device of Britannia blessing the bride and bride groom,
who are dressed, somewhat incongruously, in the costume of ancient Rome.
At the foot of the bridegroom was the figure of a dog intended to denote fidelity,
at the feet of the Queen a pair of turtle doves."
The cake featured a simple white icing which had been around for many years but since it was featured on Queen Victoria's cake
it was dubbed royal icing, and is still used today to decorate sugar cookies.
Though royal as it was Victoria's cake featured only one tier.
The stack of snake-filled pies of the 17th century had not lent their height to their cake descendants.
But all that changed with Victoria's daughter also named Victoria.
Now the legend says that the tiered cake was inspired by Saint Bride's Church in London
though it also says that this began in 1703 and it may be a myth since records don't seem to confirm this
but for Princess Victoria's big day in 1858
"The wedding cake was between six and seven feet high and was divided from the base to the top into three compartments,
all in white."
Though it seems that only one tier was actually edible and it wasn't until 1882 atPrince Leopold's wedding
that the entire cake was edible and it may have been based on the sugar sculptures of Antoine Carême,
and while not strictly a cake the French also had a very tall confection for their weddings called a croquembouche
of which Carême was a master,
but back in jolly old England by the end of the 19th century people were starting to get sick of white wedding cake.
"Which is so intimately associated with purity, it is allowed to become horribly monotonous."
And so colored wedding cakes actually became quite popular for several decades though white never really went out of style.
Now between the Great Depression and the rationing of World War I and World War II
large tiered wedding cakes, both in the US and in England, became the domain of the wealthy only
and so most people would make a much smaller cake and then rent a large cardboard cake for photos.
Now you have Instagrammers like renting big houses and Lamborghinis for their photos, but
really has anything changed since our grandparents time?
I don't think so.
Now war rationing didn't just affect the common people.
Even Queen Elizabeth II herself was subject to rationing in England.
So for her 500 pound, 9 foot tall wedding cake she had to send out for ingredients
to South Africa and Australia, as one does, earning the cake the nickname The 10,000 Mile Cake.
I guess you gotta make do with what you got.
Now hers seem to be one of the last large wedding fruit cakes because the lighter sponge which was already much more popular in the US
began to become popular in England as well for their wedding cakes
and I can tell you that's the kind of sponge that we'll be having for our actual wedding cake, but for today
it's fruit cake baby.
So once your almond icing is browned take it out of the oven and let it cool,
and you're gonna want to keep a close eye on this because it takes a while for it to go from not brown at all
to a little bit browned, but it takes like 20 seconds to go from a little bit browned to pretty much burnt,
and I caught mine just on the cusp. It wasn't ruined but it was almost there.
Now on to the even more finicky second icing or sugar icing. For this what you'll need is:
3 egg whites, and 500 grams of confectioners sugar.
Now you want to make sure to look at the ingredients on the sugar that you buy because terminology kind of changes depending on location.
Usually powdered sugar is just sugar but confectioner's sugar, or icing sugar, will have corn starch added
and that is actually what you want for this.
In her recipe Miss Rafael actually adds starch to her sugar but you can just buy it that way now.
But if yours doesn't have cornstarch then just add two tablespoons in and you're good to go.
So first whisk your egg whites until you have stiff peaks. Then while continuously beating add in the sugar very slowly.
Like one tablespoon at a time kind of slowly, and you need to keep it whisking very, very quickly.
So it's actually going to be a lot easier if you can do this with a stand mixer.
If you add the sugar in too quickly it ends up turning basically into royal icing. It's like a glaze more than
the fluffy almost like marshmallow whip that you're going to get if you do it nice and slowly.
So spread the top and the sides of the cake generously with the icing and once it's iced it's ready to eat.
And here we are our 18th century wedding cake.
It's gorgeous I think. I think I did a quite good job.
You can kind of see that there are some lines of the fruit that was added,
and then you can definitely see that almond paste right on top.
I'm curious if it's dry. Let's give it a shot.
Yeah so that icing is like- it's like rock hard.
It is really there for looks.
Hm!
It's actually moister than I expected. It's not too dry though it is very crumbly so it's
kind of like this odd combination of dry and moist, but
the flavors are fantastic.
I'm getting a little bit of orange from the orange peel
and those spices, but currants kind of carry the day. I mean there are a ton of them in there,
but those other flavors do come through. It's
it's not as Christmassy as I had expected. I really kind of expected this to be like Christmas
in a cake form. Christmas cake!
But it's not as Christmassy as I thought. I think it maybe needed a little bit more spice to achieve that which is great.
You don't want Christmas, you want wedding cake.
Is this a wedding cake? I mean-
technically but if I went to a wedding and got this I wouldn't be thrilled.
I can tell you this is not the cake that we're having
this Friday but it's still lovely.
So again make sure to follow me and the wedding on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller
and I will see you next time a married man on Tasting History.