In New England, Christmas didn’t become an important holiday until about the middle of the nineteenth century. The Puritans didn’t like it. In time, they became less strict about some of their beliefs, but not their hostility to Christmas. But the Puritans and their descendants weren’t nearly as consistent as they liked to think they were. In the eighteenth century, when Thanksgiving began to develop as the most important regional holiday, New Englanders began sneaking Christmas in by the back door by featuring traditional English Christmas foods in their Thanksgiving feasts. That’s how turkey became the centerpiece of the American Thanksgiving dinner. It’s also how several traditional English Christmas desserts like mince pie and plum pudding found their way onto the festive New England board. The recipe we’re going to tell you about in this column, for “Plumb Cake,” is an example of an English treat that became popular in New England for Thanksgiving and, later on, for Christmas.

The recipe comes from a splendid source for historic cooking that we mentioned in our last column, the first cookbook written by an American author—American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, published in Hartford in 1796. Simmons is an interesting, if mysterious, character. She tells us on her title page that she is “an American orphan,” and it’s likely that she was at best semi-literate. She probably couldn’t write (she may have composed her little book by dictation), but she probably could read (we assume, for example, that she read the cookbooks by English authors from which she copied a number of recipes).

American Cookery was an immediate success. In the preface to the second edition, published in Albany later in 1796, Simmons tells her readers with evident pride of the need for a second edition, based on the unexpectedly rapid sales of the first. The book was also a lasting success. There were numerous reprints of it, not to mention even more numerous piratings and plagiarizings, over the next thirty years. Such was its impact and influence that early nineteenth-century editions of popular English cookbooks invariably included sections of distinctively American recipes.

So Amelia Simmons’s career fits the classic American success story of the poor, but plucky girl (in this instance) who pulls herself up by her own bootstraps and gains fame and fortune for herself. Unfortunately, it also fits what has become another classic American success stereotype—that life at the top is shot through with competition and jealousy. In both editions, Simmons complains bitterly about errors in or unauthorized additions to her text, which she alleges were the result of “a design to . . . injure the sale of the book.” She accuses the person who transcribed her work for publication of being either ignorant or in the grip of “evil intention.”

These internecine rivalries aside, American Cookery is a refreshing mixture of original American recipes—the book includes the first published versions of American-style custardized pumpkin pie, for example—and classic English preparations. “Plumb Cake” is an instance of the second type:

Mix one pound currants, one drachm nutmeg, mace and cinnamon each, a little salt, one pound of citron, orange peal candied, and almonds bleach'd, 6 pound of flour, (well dry'd) beat 21 eggs and add with 1 quart new ale yeast, half pint of wine, 3 half pints of cream and raisins, q: s:

One way in which Simmons’s cake differs from English cake-making at this time is in its use of yeast as well as eggs. You’ll notice that there’s no sugar in this cake except for what’s found in the candied fruit and the sherry or other sweet wine that is probably the type that Simmons intends. (Candied fruit is readily available in stores at holiday time, and online year round. Of course, you can also make your own.) There’s also cream instead of butter in this cake. Some of the terminology perhaps requires explanation. A “drachm” or dram equals one-sixteenth of an ounce. “q: s:” is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase “quantum sufficit”: as much as suffices—in other words, as much as you like.

The recipe as Simmons gives it, with six pounds of flour and twenty-one eggs (!) makes, by our modern standards, a truly gargantuan cake—appropriate for an era of larger households and of brick ovens that were to be fired up only once or twice a week. In our day of smaller families and gas or electric ovens, Simmons’s recipe would make four nine-inch cakes. Here’s the recipe converted for one modern cake and with the measurements given by volume rather than weight.

Preheat oven to 375°. In a large bowl, mix the spices, salt, and flour. Add the currants, citron, orange peel, and almonds. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs. In a one-cup liquid measuring cup, dissolve the yeast, along with a pinch of sugar, in warm (100°-115°) water, and let sit for 10-15 minutes until it bubbles up, almost filling the cup. Place the eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl. Add the yeast, Madeira, cream, raisins, and flour mixture. Mix with a dough hook or by hand for about 5 minutes. The batter will be sticky. Pour into a greased and floured 9-inch cake pan and let rest for 5-10 minutes. To emulate the falling oven temperatures of a wood-fired brick oven, bake uncovered at 375° for 20 minutes, then at 350° for 20 minutes, then at 325° for 45 minutes. If the top browns too fast, cover with aluminum foil. Turn off the heat and insert a knife in the middle. If the knife comes out clean, place the cake on a rack to cool. If the knife comes out with traces of still-moist dough on it, leave the cake in the oven, with the heat off, for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until the knife comes out clean.