Appalachian History

Yes, it’s heavy as a brick, and lasts long enough that you can re-gift it year after year without anyone commenting on its shelf life having expired. Blame the Scots.

Early versions of the rich style fruitcake, such as what we know today as Scottish Black Bun, date from the Middle Ages, and were luxuries for special occasions. Slices would have been served on Twelfth Night. The dessert was later known as Scotch Christmas Bun before becoming Black Bun. From the Irish and English some Appalachian residents have come to know this type of fruitcake as Scotch bun, or Dundee cakes.

The heavily spiced, dense, chewy black mixture is made with dried fruit, nuts and whiskey a few months in advance of Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) eating, in order to give it time to mature.

It's wrapped in a shell of very thin, hard pastry to trap in the flavor over these months. It's cut into slices for serving, as gingerbread would be, although it's very different.

One’s definition of fruitcake in Appalachia depends on one’s ancestry. Folks in the region with English heritage might traditionally flavor fruitcakes with ginger and add candied peel to the dried fruits and nuts, sometimes soaking the cake in liqueurs, not whiskey.

And in German influenced households the stollen served at the holidays is fluffy and breadlike, much closer to the panetone found in Italian homes. Dresdner Christstollen, originating from Dresden, Germany, introduced marzipan into the mix.

“They always had fruitcake for Christmas,” relates Kentuckian Sidney Saylor Farr about her friend Nell Caldwell in More Than Moonshine. “But not your everyday traditional one made of candied fruits and nuts. There was no money to buy such things at the store. Instead she used homemade jams and jellies and preserves, and walnuts and hickory nuts gathered from the woods.”

‘Poor man’s fruitcake,’ by the way, is not fruitcake at all, but rather stack cake, the delicious dried apple cake found throughout the region.

Eugene O'Neill, in his 1914 play, ''The Movie Man,'' coined a memorable simile: ''We sure are as nutty as a fruitcake or we wouldn't be here.'' Can the dense brown confection ever shed the stereotype that comes along with being, well, a fruitcake?

And, finally, in the spirit of the season, a recipe for fruitcake from the Capital Scot site; be sure to read carefully!

You'll need the following:

1 C water
1 C sugar
4 large eggs
2 C dried fruit
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 C brown sugar
lemon juice
nuts
1 FULL bottle of your favorite whisky (single malts are best)

Sample the whisky to check for quality. Take a large bowl. Check the whisky again to be sure that it is of the highest quality. Pour 1 level cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer; beat 1 C of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add 1 tsp sugar and beat again. Make sure the whisky is still OK. Cry another tup. Turn off the mixer. Break two legs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the whisky to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift 2 cups of salt. Or something. Who cares. Check the whisky. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Spoon. Of sugar or something. Whatever you can find.

Grease the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out of the window. Check the whisky again. Go to bed.

Who likes fruitcake anyway?

sources: Appalachian Home Cooking, by Mark F. Sohn, University Press of Kentucky, 2005
More Than Moonshine, by Sidney Saylor Farr, Univ of Pittsburgh Press, 1983
www.southernbyways.com/this-georgia-town-takes-the-fruit-cake/
http://thecapitalscot.com/pastfeatures/fruitcake.html
www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/the_roots_of_appalachian_christmas_traditions/issue/554
www.scottishrecipes.co.uk/blackbunrecipe.htm



fruitcake Christmas+in+Appalachia Hogmanay appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

CARSKADON'S

Raisins, figs, currants, citron, orange and lemon peel, mince meat and all those things which go to make the Christmas table attractive and beautiful. Do not fool your money away on useless toys, but come and supply yourselves with something worth 100 cents on the dollar. Come and see what we have to offer you.


Yours very truly,
GEO T CARSKADON

Ad from KEYSER [WV] TRIBUNE
December 5, 1913

Mince meat, or mince, pies have had a traditional place on the Christmas table throughout Appalachia for two reasons: 1) lack of refrigeration; 2) British ancestors.

This is a time of year when hunters, from the earliest settlers on, have entered the forest seeking wild game to supplement the winter larder. The custom of mincemeat pies during the holidays is partially a holdover from putting up wild game in the days before freezers. The mincemeat mixture was a method of preservation, as the combination of the acids from the fruits and the heat from baking inhibited the growth of bacteria in the meat.

As for the British influence, today’s Christmas mince pie first started to evolve in the 11th Century, when the Crusaders were returning from the Holy Land.

They brought home a variety of oriental spices, which over time led to the addition of three spices to the meat pie (cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg) for the three gifts given to the Christ child by the Magi. In honor of the birth of the Savior, the mince pie was originally made in oblong casings (coffin or cradle shaped), with a place for the Christ Child to be placed on top. These pies were not very large. The baby was removed by the children and the manger (pie) was eaten in celebration.

The pie’s name comes from the Latin minuere, "to diminish," and of course mincemeat referred originally to a meat that had been minced up, a meaning it has had since the sixteenth century. Already by that era minced or shred pies, as they were also known, had become a Christmas specialty.

Mincemeat was banned in the 17th century during Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan regime, as “sinfully rich” and “unfit for God fearing people.” The superstitions associated with the dessert had a smell of paganism to them (as do many Northern European holiday customs which can be traced back to winter solstice festivals).

If, for example, you ate one mincemeat pie at a different house on each of the twelve days of Christmas, you would experience good luck for each of the 12 months of the coming year.

Over the years, the pies grew smaller, and the shape of the pie was gradually changed from oblong to round. By the nineteenth century the meat content had been reduced to the point that the pies were simply filled with a mixture of suet (the hard layer of fatty tissue surrounding the kidneys of cattle), spices and dried fruit, previously steeped in brandy. This filling was put into little pastry cases that were covered with pastry lids and then baked in an oven.

British tradition holds that Father Christmas is a fan of the pie. Therefore, British children will often leave a slice or two near the fireplace or chimney, along with milk or brandy, to thank him for gifts in their stockings.

We have the Scots to blame for fruitcake, that other famous holiday desert one either loves or hates, but that’s a story for another day.


sources: “The Roots of Appalachian Christmas Traditions,” by Lois Carol Wheatley, Appalachian Voice, Nov 2007
www.foodtimeline.org/christmasfood.html#mincemeat
www.wvgenweb.org/mineral/conews5dec1913.htm
whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory/MincemeatPie.htm
www.ehow.com/about_4608748_mincemeat-pie.html



mincemeat+pie fruitcake Christmas+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history