Madeira Cake

Named for its usual accompaniment rather than an ingredient, Madeira cake was a favorite throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a slice of cake with a glass of Madeira was both a slightly more fortifying alternative to afternoon tea and a suitable way of staving off hunger pangs in the early evening if you’d missed tea. There are many, very slightly different recipes, but it was nearly always made in a loaf pan and is instantly recognizable whenever it appears on Downton<