This yeasty 18th century Election Cake sounds as distasteful as the 2016 race
Nothing says democracy like a dense raisin loaf
Believe it or not, elections used to be joyous occasions.
In pre-Revolutionary Connecticut, voting in local elections took place during spring. Farmers traveled to Hartford and socialized with city folk. Neighbors hosted parties. Housewives opened their doors to all kinds of uninvited guests.
Then one day in May, ministers delivered an election sermon. The formal vote count took place afterward, then a ball was held the following evening. In the Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), election day was considered the “reddest-lettered day in our calendar,” with events that “brightened the whole year.” It was a time of heartwarming celebration of a bright new nation full of possibility. Local elections would continue like this until national elections gained importance.
Throughout the season, women baked massive quantities of dense raisin cake as a way to fill the bellies of tired travelers, soldiers, and visiting party representatives. The treat came to be known as Election Cake.
A 1796 recipe by Amelia Simmons calls for huge portions of ingredients:
Because leavening agents like baking powder did not yet exist, the cake was yeasty and hearty, with clumps of spicy fruit. Sometimes it dripped with frosting. Apparently, it paired well with ginger beer.
It was so good the tradition spread throughout the colonies, and people literally wrote home about it. In 1862, for instance, a young soldier named Frederick Osborne was stationed in North Carolina, and wrote his family in Massachusetts to ask, “Aunt Jane has been making ‘lection cake I suppose, or is the time for it past?”
Mathematician John Howard Redfield of Connecticut exclaimed, “What feasts! Was every cake so delicious?…The raisins embedded in the toothsome compound were joys which no Connecticut boy could ever forego or forget.” He even applied eucharistic themes to the delicacy, deeming it “too sacred to be used for anything but weddings, high teas, and Election week.”
Pretty sure today’s two-year bloodbaths aren’t deserving.
