Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote & Sook

After compiling Sook’s recipes, Marie Rudisill, compiled a fruitcake cookbook, Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote & Sook. Clearly, the publisher wanted you to remember her connection to her cousin and while this does have Sook’s recipe, it has a wide assortment of other fruitcakes.

In her book Rudisill states:

Fruitcake, to Southerners, is a birthright.

While I would argue that the fruit makes a fruitcake, Rudisill says it is the flour. OF course, there is only ONE flour for Southern baking, White Lily. After 125 years in the South, White Lily was bought by Smuckers and the milling was moved out of the South. The moving of White Lily was tantamount to firing on Fort Sumter or burning Atlanta. It was a cruel blow. White Lily has never been the same! I still have a lone bag of White Lily milled in Knoxville, Tennessee and I cannot bear to open use it as it would constitute the end of an era. (And after two years, it a bit stale. Still, I’m not using it.)

One of the oldest Southern fruitcakes is the 1866 Fruitcake, most commonly known as the Lee Fruitcake.

Marie Rudisill discovered a copy of this recipe folded up inside a copy of A Life of General Robert E. Lee by John Estes Cook. It was in the dresser drawer of Bud Faulk who was an ardent Civil War collector. There was also a rattlesnake skin. It seems Bud had rattlesnake that lived for years in his dresser and when he died, so did the rattlesnake. Rudisill swears that every time she visited Bud’s cemetery, she would fine a rattlesnake coiled on his grave.

Lee Fruitcake

1/2 cup candied lemon peel
1/2 cup sliced candied orange peel
1 1/2 cups finely cut citron
1 1/2 cups candied pineapple
1 cup candied cherries
1 1/4 cup dark seeded raisins
1 1/4 cup white raisins
1 cup chopped California walnuts
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup sifted enriched flour
1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups enriched flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon all spice
1teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cloves
3/4 cup grape juice

Combine the peels, fruits, nuts; sprinkle with 1/4 cup of flour and mix well.
Thoroughly cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Sift together 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, salt and spices; add alternately with grape juice. Pour the batter over the floured mixture of peel, fruit and nuts. Pour into a large tube pan until 3/4 full. Do not flatten batter. Bake in a very slow oven at 250F for about 5 hours. Remove from pan and pack in air tight tin with a double layer of cheesecloth soaked in bourbon.
Bake at least three months before Christmas. Do not let the cake dry out and keep lacing it with bourbon.

Notice it says you need to bake it three months in advance, so you have an out on this one. Truth is, you can bake it and eat it right away, but soaking for 12 weeks in bourbon can’t be all bad.

Sook's Cookbook

Yes Virginia, it’s “Fruitcake Season.” I know what you are thinking but stop. Fruitcakes are wonderful. Unfortunately, in the United States we suffer from the mistaken notion that the “fruit” in fruitcake is some sort of afterthought when it should be the main ingredient. (Hey, that’s why they call it “fruit” cake.)

In the coming days I will be pointing you to various resources for your cakes, but to start us off, I am giving you the most famous fruitcake ever made. It was first made by Truman Capote’s cousin, Sook. As a child, Truman would follow is cousin down to the river bank to that palace of sin operated by the Indian, Mr. Haha Jones. There they would purchase the bourbon whisky needed to make the cake.


As an adult, Truman Capote recounted this ritual in what may be his most famous work, A Christmas Memory. Years later, Capote's aunt, Marie Rudisill, gathered the recipes into Sook's Cookbook.

Here is Sook’s cake so you can make your own memories.

Sook’s Famous “Christmas Memory” Fruitcake

2 1/2 pound Brazil nuts
2 1/2 pound white and dark raisins; mixed
1/2 pound candied cherries
1/2 pound candied pineapple
1 pound citron
1/2 pound blanched almonds
1/2 pound pecan halves
1/2 pound black walnuts
1/2 pound dried figs
1 scant tablespoon nutmeg
1 scant tablespoon cloves
2 tablespoons grated bitter chocolate
8-ounce grape jelly
8–ounce glass jar grape juice
8-ounce glass bourbon whiskey
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 scant tablespoon allspice


Batter

2 cups pure butter
2 cups sugar
12 eggs
4 cups flour


Cut the fruits and nuts into small pieces and use enough of the flour to dredge them, making a thin coat over all. Cream the butter and sugar adding one egg at a time, beating well. Add the flour. Add the dredged fruits and nuts, spices, seasoning, and flavorings. Mix thoroughly by hand. Line your cake tin with wax paper and grease well, then flour. The pan should be large enough to hold a twelve-pound cake.
Pour the mixture into the pan and put it in a steamer over cold water. Close the steamer and bring the water to a rolling boil. After the water boils, lower the heat and steam the cake on top of the stove for about four-and-one-half hours. Preheat the oven to around 250 degrees, and bake for one hour.

Now, one can simply drive to a liquor and buy your cake bourbon, but if you happen to know a friendly bootlegger, pay him a visit. It's a much better story.