Found my great-aunt's 'sugarless' fruitcake recipe from 1972... what a mess

I was totally skeptical of this crumbling card in her old tin, but I baked it for a family reunion. The thing was a dense, weirdly savory brick that convinced me some heirlooms are better as stories than recipes. Anyone have a family food item that just did not translate to modern tastes?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jennifer11d ago

Hold up, what if the problem is us and not the recipe? Maybe we just don't know how to eat it right. My grandma's meatloaf was dry as dust, but she'd slice it thin and fry it in a pan with eggs the next day. That fruitcake might need to be soaked in brandy for a month or served with a really sweet cheese. Did you try any old-school ways to serve it before giving up?

shane_knight11d ago

Exactly. We treat old food like a microwave meal and call it bad. My great aunt's plum pudding was a brick until someone showed us to steam it for an hour and pour warm custard over it. That fruitcake is probably meant to be a small slice with strong coffee, not a big hunk by itself. We lost the instructions for a lot of these dishes.