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The cake is actually a classic English fruitcake or plum cake. The original cakes
included molasses, spice, raisins, and currants were used in this cake. Later brandy was
added. Also known as oak cake, Hartford Election Cake, and training cakes, because
another name for Election Day was Training Day.
Ruled by the English,
colonial American farmers were called to military practice for days of
training sessions (know as mustering) to the nearest designated towns. Alice Ross, in
her article on Election Cakes for the
Journal of Antiques and Collectibles states:
They
traveled (sometimes for days) and descended on the nearest designated
towns for days of training sessions (mustering) and nights of
socializing, carousing, and partaking of what become know as "Muster
Cake." Townsfolk, of necessity, had prepared for the onslaught by
baking and cooking for the numbers that would fill every bed in homes,
taverns, and inns.
1771 -
These cakes were baked to celebrate Election Days at least as early as 1771
in Connecticut, before the American Revolution of 1775. The Election Cake, as all cakes
baked in colonial homes, was yeast-leavened, as there was no commercial baking powder, and
they were baked in brick fireplace ovens. Colonial women vied with each other as to who
baked the best cakes as families exchanged visits and treated their guest with slices of
this cake. Historians feel that the recipe for Election Cake was adapted from
popular period English yeast breads.
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According to a Washington
Post newspaper article called, Election Day Cake Is a Piece of Americana,
But Not Everyone's Choice, By Bonnie S. Benwick, Wednesday, October 27,
2004:
All
involved had to keep up their strength, and Election Day Cake filled the
bill. After three dough risings, "cider and delectable cake was served
at Connecticut's expense." We know this because the Society of the
Descendants of the Founders of Hartford has found references to the
state's 1771 General Assembly reimbursing one Ezekial Williams for the
ingredients of an Election Day Cake (which certainly had to include
nutmeg, since Connecticut's known as the Nutmeg State. But that's
another story). A "huge election cake" was made for the members of the
First Company Governor's Foot Guard in 1775.
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According to the Culinary Historians of New
York article,
Fall 2004, Volume 18, No. 1, called
From Great Cake to Curiosity: On the Trail of the
Hartford Election Cake, by Stephen Schmidt:
The itemized record of Connecticut's
election Day expenditures for the year 1771 certainly point toward a
cake in the bushel range. All told, the Connecticut colony spent a
little over £23 on
"sundries," including "cake," for it Election Day festivities in
that year. The materials of "the great election cake" itself cost
£3, and a certain Mrs. Ledlie was paid a littler over £2 for making
it. In 1771, £5 was a hefty sum to pay for a cake!
1796 - Amelia Simmons
published a recipe for this cake in her cookbook American Cookery, 2nd Edition, in
1796:
Election cake - Thirty quarts of flour, 10 pound butter,
14 pound sugar, 12 pound raisins, 3 doz eggs, one pint wine, one quart brandy, 4 ounces
cinnamon, 4 ounces fine colander seed, 3 ounces ground alspice; wet flour with milk to the
consistence of bread over night, adding one quart yeast; the next morning work the butter
and sugar together for half an hour, which will render the cake much lighter and whiter;
when it has rise light work in every other ingredient except the plumbs, which work in
when going into the oven.
1830
- The cake became known as Hartford Election Cake when politicians there served it
to men who voted a straight party ticket. While waiting for election result, it was
a New England tradition to serve these huge Election Cakes (each cake weighing
approximately 12 pounds each).
Housewives established their reputations as socialites and hostesses on
the quality of their cakes. Connecticut historian, J. Hammond Trumbell, in1886 wrote about
it this way:
"Election
Day (the first Thursday in May), the reddest letter in our calendar, brightened the whole
year. Good housekeepers were expected to have finished their spring cleaning long
before... ‘lection cake was rising to make ready for the oven: and few homes were too
poor to offer these refreshments to visitors."
An article in the New York Times on November 2, 1988 called Election
Cake: A Noble Tradition, by Marian Burros states the following:
"So what then is the how, when, where,
what and why of Election Cakes? The Connecticut Historical Society provided some answers,
but...said...that some conflicts cannot be resolved. "What you can say...is that this
is cake traditionally made in conneciton with elections in Hartford form pre-Revolutionary
times...the Colonial Records of Connecticut from May 1771 show that one Ezekial
Williams Esq. submitted a bill to the Connecticut General Assembly for the cost of making
the cake for the election'." To understand why the government of the colony of
Connecticut would pay for such a cake, along with other food, you have to know how the
Governor of the colony, and later the state, was elected. In early spring, elections were
held in Connecticut towns, and in May representatives of the towns gathered in Hartford,
the capitol, for the formal counting of the votes, first for Governor, then for Lieutenant
Governor and then for other officials. The counting often went on into the night. The
representatives came the day before and stayed overnight in Hartford...in every Hartford
home, Election Cakes were made to serve the out-of-town lodgers. According to...[The
Connecticut Historical Society], housewives planned for Election Day well in advance and
made cakes that would keep. By the mid-1800's Election Day had declined as a major
festival and around 1875 the date for election of the Governor shifted to January from
May..."
1900s - Alice Ross, in
her article on Election Cakes for the
Journal of Antiques and Collectibles states:
"After 1900, Election Day in the cities
lost a good deal of this tradition. Large influxes of non-English immigrants kept
different holiday customs, and the restitution and commercialization of Christmas and
Easter probably weakened its appeal. We were no longer the only democracy, and such things
as popular elections may not have seemed as uniquely American."
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