There is a wide range of popular plum cakes kek yogurt cheese puddings. Plum cakes made with fresh plums came with other migrants from other traditions in which plum cake is prepared using plum as a primary ingredient. The term “plum cake” and “fruit cake” have become interchangeable. Since dried fruit is used as a sweetening agent and any dried fruit used to be described as “plums”, many plum cakes and plum puddings do not contain the plum fruit now known by that name.
In Old English, the term plūme was “from medieval Latin pruna, from Latin prunum,” which equated to “prune”. Prune in modern French means plum, so plum tarts have names such as tarte aux prunes. Plum cake has historically referred to an early type and style of fruitcake in England since around 1700. Raisins and currants were used, which in the English language were referred to as plums since around 1660. In 1881 Colonel Henry-Herbert said that “a good English plum cakeis a national institution”. At times, Thomas Carlyle was one among many who ate a light style of plum cake with tea, into which he would dip the cake, which he described as bun-like with currants “dotted here and there”.
Plum cakes were raised by whipping air into the cake batter, rather than by the use of yeast. Up to World War I, cakes, including plum cakes, were baked along with loaves of bread. A smaller cake or pasty might be slipped in or pulled out after the baking had begun, but a raised pie with well-protected sides, or a large plum cake, would take at least the same time as the loaves, and experienced housewives made them in sizes to do so. The English variety of plum cake also exists on the European mainland, although “plum cake” there more usually refers to baked cakes made with fresh, rather than dried fruit. The German plum cake, known as Zwetschkenkuchen, can be found all over the country, although its home is Bavaria. In chef Robert Carrier’s recipe for it, the base is made from yeast pastry rather than often used shortcrust pastry, because the yeast pastry “soaks up the juice from the plums without becoming soggy”.