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Show Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Quite a few American families wouldn't be serving fruit cake as a Christmas day dessert if it had not been for the British sailors of several centuries ago. Those British sailors must have been as shrewd as they were observant. In the Orient they ate cakes made with fruit. They liked them and asked for the recipes. They got them, and with an eye out for a few extra shillings and pounds, they also returned to their homeland with the ingredients necessary to the: baking of a fruit cake. Recipes were jealously guarded by the sailors. According to information gathered by the American Institute of Baking, Chicago, the sailors obtained currants and raisins from Greece and Turkey. Citrus peel preserved in honey came from Italy. Almonds came from Spain. Strange seeds and even the bark of trees came from the Far East. Although fruit cake was made available to the western world byi British sailors, the first fruit cake, as we know it, probably was baked in Egypt several centuries ago. It consisted of several kinds of tropical fruits, sugar, wheat meal, spices, oil and honey, all collected by the Egyptian housewife. In modern America, the housewife may walk into a bakery or grocery store and buy a delicious fruit cake of almost any size, and with a minimum of effort. And the cake she buys is the finishing touch for the best meals to be served during the holiday. |
