Independence Cake

The cryptic instructions for this are typical of many of Amelia Simmons recipes. She gives only some general comments on cake-making, such as “in all cakes where spices are named it is supposed that they be pounded fine and sifted; sugar must be dryed and rolled fine; flour, dryed in an oven; eggs well beat or whipped into a raging foam” – surely an exhausting business. The common raising agent was yeast, giving a texture closer to a coffee cake than a modern fruitcake, and the huge quantit