There's an old joke which speculates that only one fruitcake has ever been made, that nobody really eats it, but that it is just endlessly circulated as a gift...a candied, white elephant of sorts, forever entombed in syrup, and hopefully lost in the mail. Actually, I like the stuff. Truly, I do. In my lifetime, I've probably gone through four or five mouthfuls.

     Its perpetration is usually blamed on tradition, "My grandmother always had one..." and so on. And despite the jokes, there are any numbers of variations: Jamaican Black Cake, Black Bun, Groom's Cake, Spotted Dick, etc... However, the basic recipe usually calls for candied fruit and rinds to be mixed with nuts, the whole concoction drenched in syrup, adding just enough flour to form a lumpy plaster. Jamaican Black Cake goes a step further...adding a bottle (each) of rum and kosher wine to the mixture, then letting the mash ferment a few months. People speak of it fondly, much the way some folks reminisce about their pappy's still.

     In any incarnation, fruitcake, as we've come to know and dread it, is derived from English plum pudding. This most venerated of holiday dishes started life, innocently enough, as a medieval digestive aid known as frumenty, which according to an authentic recipe, was "wheat boiled till the grains burst, and when cool, strained and boiled again with broth or milk and yolks of eggs." This ancient equivalent to Cream of Wheat was considered the "correct accompaniment" to venison, mutton or boar's head. Over the years, cooks tried their best to make it more palatable, adding mace or ginger, perhaps throwing in some currants, raisins, figs or prunes. By the 17th century, someone hit upon the notion of adding lumps of "good English suet" (hard fat) to the porridge, then steaming until it coagulated. In the Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England, the Collect for the Last Sunday prior to Advent began with the words, "Stir up..." This, some took as a reminder to start their puddings, and to stir it periodically until it was finished.

     In more recent times, I recall a Christmas airlift of thousands of fruitcakes to U.S. Marines in Lebanon, after their compound was bombed. I understand they used them as bricks to rebuild the wall.

Acknowledgments: 50

© Russ Brown, 1998