Steamed chocolate cake

‘Very good – a great success in wartime’ is the comment scrawled in the margin of my Scottish grandmother’s copy of Farmhouse Fare, a little book of housewives’ regional recipes, economical and suitable for the rules of fast. The collection was first published in 1935 and reprinted throughout the war years. The cake is cooked on top of the stove, an economy measure in wartime when fuel had to be conserved.