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Election Cake (adapted for the Web from China Bayles' Book of Days for November 4)

Here in Pecan Springs, as everywhere across the country, we'll be voting tomorrow. And since it's bound to be a big day (and a long evening), we'll want a little something for snacks.

The tradition of celebrating an electoral victory (or consoling yourself for an electoral loss) with food seems to be a long one. I was browsing through an early nineteenth-century cookbook the other day when I came across a  recipe for something called Election Cake. “Old-fashioned election cake,” I read, “is made of four pounds of flour . . . .”

Election cake? I’d never heard of it!

But some online research pulled up an answer, in an article written by the well-known food historian Alice Ross. Election cake, Miss Ross says, was a tradition that began back in England, with the “Great Cake,” rich, spicy fruit-filled cakes baked to celebrate important family or community occasions, such as weddings, births, funerals, and holidays.

One such occasion arose during the Revolutionary War, when men flocked to the colonial towns to report for duty in the Revolutionary Army. According to Ross, the inns and taverns served cake: “Mustering Cake.” After the War, men came to town again—this time to vote in elections for which they had fought and died. It was time to celebrate again, this time, with “Election Cake.”

The recipe for Election Cake appears in the second edition of Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1800, online at Project Gutenberg)—a truly American cookbook, with recipes for such colonial novelties as Johnny Cake, Indian Slapjacks, “Pompkin pudding” (the first pumpkin pie), cooked squash with whortleberries, even the quintessentially American Spruce Beer. What’s more, Mrs. Simmons was the first cookbook author to use the word "cooky," from the Dutch “koekje,” the treats offered in colonial New York to holiday callers.

So it seems altogether appropriate that American Cookery should include recipes for three American cakes: Independence Cake, Federal Pan Cake, and Election Cake. Here is Amelia Simmons’s recipe for a cake that was obviously intended to be served to a large crowd of enthusiastic (and hungry) voters.

Election Cake

30 quarts flour
10 pound butter
14 pound sugar
12 pound raisins
3 doz eggs
one pint wine
one quart brandy
4 ounces cinnamon
4 ounces fine colander seed*
3 ounces ground allspice

Wet the flour with milk to the consistence of bread over night, adding one quart yeast; the next morning work the butter and sugar together for half an hour, which will render the cake much lighter and whiter; when it has rise light work in every other ingredient except the plumbs**, which work in when going into the oven.

*Colander seed is coriander seed, which was brought to Britain by the Romans. It was once used extensively in confectionery.  “The seeds are quite round, like tiny balls,” Mrs. Grieve tells us, “about the size of a Sweet Pea Seed . . . The longer they are kept the more fragrant they become, with a warm pungent taste.” Coriander seed was kept whole and roasted and ground before use. You might want to include more coriander in your diet. The Chinese thought it conferred immortality!

** “Plumbs” are dried raisins. A Washington Post article reports that one teacher and her students baked an Election Cake as part of their study of the voting process. Queried about what they liked and didn't like about the cake, one boy, who wasn't too keen on raisins, voted for replacing the raisins with double chocolate chips.

For a more manageable recipe (but still rich in the traditional spices that made this cake special) try this adaptation from Fannie Farmer's The Boston Cooking School Cookbook:

Election Cake

1/2 cup butter
8 finely chopped figs
1 cup bread dough
1 1/4 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sour milk
1/4 teaspoon clove
2/3 cup raisins seeded, and cut in pieces
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt

Directions:
1. Work butter into dough, using the hand.
2. Add egg well beaten, sugar, milk, fruit dredged with two tablespoons flour, and flour mixed and sifted with remaining ingredients.
3. Put into a well-buttered bread pan, cover, and let rise one and one-fourth hours.
4. Bake one hour in a slow oven.
5. Cover with Boiled Milk Frosting.

Boiled Milk Frosting
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Put the butter into a saucepan and, when it is melted, add the sugar and milk. Stir until the boiling-point is reached and then boil for 10 minutes without stirring (235 degrees). Remove from the heat, add vanilla and beat until of spreading consistency.

And be sure to vote!

>>shaker herbs

Susan wrote this entry for August 6 in The China Bayles Book of Days. This is an expanded version, with links.

The Shakers arrived in New York Harbor on this day in 1774, on a ship called Mariah. They were searching for greater religious freedom and for land on which to establish separate communities.

Behold the Flowers that deck the Field,
The Gentle breeze perfuming,
and Tender Herbs their Fragrance Yield
Are Health and Life Diffusing
—Harvard Shaker Community Herb Catalog, 1843

Shaker Medicinal Herbs

            The Shakers were the among the first commercial purveyors of herb seeds and dried herbs in America. In the early 1800s, herbal medicine was widely accepted, both by physicians and by individual practitioners, and there was an increasing demand for carefully prepared herbal materials. At first, the Shakers gathered the plants in the areas where they settled--eleven Shaker communities had been established in the northeastern states by 1800—but they quickly began to exploit the potential of the pharmaceutical market. The Shaker communities became the first to grow and sell medicinal herbs on a substantial scale. Even as late as 1889, when the industry was waning, the community in Enfield, New Hampshire, reported shipping some 44,000 pounds of dried dock root, in one season, to a single pharmaceutical firm.

The 1837 Catalog
The Shakers first sent their herb catalog to physicians in 1837. Here are five of the herbs offered in the catalog, with the catalog descriptions:

·         Bugle (Lycopus virginicus). In spitting of blood and similar diseases, it is, perhaps, the best remedy know. It is a sedative, and tonic, and appears to equalize the circulation of the blood.
·         Button Snake-Root (Liatris spicata). A powerful diuretic.
·         Golden Seal (Hydrastis canadensis) Tonic and gently laxative. Promotes the biliary [gallbladder] secretions and removes jaundice.
·         Gravel Plant (Epigaea repens) Diuretic . . . . Has often cured where the catheter had to be habitually used.
·         Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberosa) In all inflammations of the chest this is an invaluable medicine. It is sudorific, anodyne and expectorant.
            
In addition to growing and selling dried herbs, the Shakers also produced and marketed a variety of medicinal preparations, and by the 1880s, some eighty different proprietary medicines were being sold. They were also widely known for their simple furniture and for the home-spun fabrics produced from the flax they grew in their fields and the sheep they raised on their pastures. Their crafts--among them the distinctive Shaker boxes, have lasted to this day.

The Shaker diet was simple. Vegetables and herbs were grown in the village, dairy cows gave milk to drink and to make butter and cheese, and cattle and sheep provided meat. Shaker recipes are usually simple, delicious, and healthful, like this gingerade drink.

The herbal medicine business declined steadily after the Civil War, as did the appeal of the Shaker religion. But because the Shakers kept careful records—community journals were required by rule, and business documents were rigorously maintained—we can still see and marvel at their wide-ranging efforts to build a better life, not only for themselves but for others.

’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free
’Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
—Shaker Hymn

Read more about Shaker gardens, Shaker medicinals, and Shaker life:
Shaker Medicinal Herbs: A Compendium of History, Lore, and Uses, by Amy Bess Miller
The Best of Shaker Cooking, by Persis Wellington Miller and Amy Bess Miller

Photo: Canterbury Shaker Village, Canterbury CT