A good cookbook is far more than a manual of instruction. Among other things it’s an indulgence, an invitation to venture into the unknown and a sensory revelation. And in the case of “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook” it’s a memoir that happens to include recipes. As one would expect of the idiosyncratic author, it’s not in any sense a traditional cookbook.

Written to keep the seventy-seven-year-old Alice solvent during the lean years following Gertrude Stein’s death, it’s a feat of inspired storytelling, particularly impressive considering its author was in her seventies, had never written a book before and for several months of the book’s drafting was suffering from a debilitating attack of jaundice. It came about when in 1954 Alice, after having turned down her publisher’s persistent invitations to write her memoirs, negotiated a compromise. She agreed to write what she described as “a mingling of recipe and reminiscence”, a clever ploy which meant she could side-step divulging anything too personal while revisiting a life of extraordinary adventures and indulging her passion for the culinary arts at the same time.

What gives the book its unique charm is what a Time reviewer called “the stream of Alice’s prattle”. Her gossipy and droll conversational style is as entertaining as the recipes themselves are instructive. Seemingly arbitrarily ordered, these are a sideline to her reminiscences. It’s as if the well-known sensory nexus between taste and memory is rearranged so that, for Alice, memory provokes taste in the form of recipes. In the preface “A Word to the Cook” she explains it was “nostalgia for old days and old ways and for remembered health and enjoyment” that inspired her. And although she doesn’t say so, it was a form of elegy for her beloved Gertrude.

Described by some as a “culinary autobiography”, Alice’s book mingles recipe and reminiscence as she set out to do. It’s clearly the element of reminiscence however that drives the narrative. It’s the passion she relives in the retelling that makes the whole so much more than a collection of recipes.

“Food in the Bugey During the Occupation”, an account of how the two women lived during the German occupation of France in World War 2, is a prime example of how Alice so vividly recaptures the past that it reads as if it happened yesterday. When war broke out, Gertrude and Alice retreated to the Bugey, a French region between the rivers Rhone and Ain, where they maintained a country house, first in Bilignin and later in Culoz. Throughout what she calls the “dreary dismal months” of war it is food, or the lack of it, that becomes their constant preoccupation. She keeps the tone light despite the ever-present backdrop of the war and the desperate anxiety that must have plagued them. Having to scrabble for whatever could be caught, begged or bartered must have been a testing time for a cook whose extravagances ran to lobster, truffles and rivers of cream.

(The image above right showing Gertrude cooking in the kitchen with Alice at Culoz shows how wartime demanded a community-minded effort as Gertrude normally wouldn’t have been seen dead in a kitchen.)

But Alice has a secret stash, the thought of which buoys her up during the austere months. Since 1940 she’s been hoarding provisions for a “Liberation Fruitcake”. Hidden away in the linen cupboard and tenderly watched over are “4 lbs. citron, candied orange and lemon peel, pineapple and cherries and 2 lbs. raisins, all of which [she] had put into two well-covered glass jars”.

These jewel-like treasures are as sacred as the faith the two women keep all through the long winter of 1943 that like spring itself, the Allies will come and deliver them. You can feel the barely contained delirium as they learn of the landings, then the liberation of Paris. When at last the Americans arrive on their doorstep in that most American of ways, in a jeep, their joy knows no bounds. They can celebrate with their fellow countrymen, champagne can be broken out, food can again take centre stage, and the American army can be invited to dinner. Most importantly, Alice can bake the long-awaited fruitcake. Reliving those moments Alice is clearly enthralled all over again. So much so that the recipe itself comes almost as an afterthought as if she must remind herself, oh yes, that fruitcake. Once the cake is baked, she learns it’s General Alexander Patch who commands the Seventh Army, their liberators. Sadly, the general is unavailable to come and sample it personally, so she discovers his address and sends it to him to share among the troops. There’s no record of how it was received so we can only surmise the gratitude of the long-suffering troops at this unexpected boost to K-rations.

The Time reviewer quoted earlier summed up his remarks about Alice’s cookbook by saying “it will be the fiercest Francophobe who can read Alice’s recipes and not hanker for a taste, the dullest cook who will not want to get to the kitchen and try them out”. Being neither a Francophobe, nor (I hope) a dull cook, I’ve long hankered to do just this. Liberation Fruitcake, I decided, would be my first attempt. Christmas being not far off and fruitcake a staple of the traditional festivities, it seemed a logical choice. Alice instructs us her cake recipe makes 12 lbs, or about 5.5 kg. That’s a lot of cake, but then again it had to feed an army.

Charming as Alice’s anecdotes are, her recipes are another matter. She and Julia Child, in their shared veneration for French cuisine, have much in common. What divides them, however, is precision. Julia’s adamant about quantities, ingredients, baking times, utensils and so on, to the point almost of pedantry. Alice, on the other hand, caught up as she was by memories of jeeps and colonels and all the “happy confusion”, is less exacting. Rather than being set out à la Child, with headings, lists, notes and so on, Alice’s recipes flow along happily among the reminiscences, with barely a pause for a heading. Here is her Liberation Fruitcake recipe:

“A day in advance cut in slivers 1 1/2 lbs. citron, 1 lb. cherries. Wash, dry and cover with brandy 2 lbs. white currants. Put aside. Blanch, dry and chop 1 1/2 lbs. almonds. Put these aside separately. The next day, thoroughly cream 1 lb. butter, add slowly 1 lb. sugar stirring until very light. Add the yolks of 12 eggs one by one. Drain and dry the raisins. Add to the prepared fruits. Sieve 1 lb. flour, put enough of it on the fruits to which the raisins have been added to make sure they do not stick together. Put the fruits in a sieve and remove all the superfluous flour. Add the flour in the sieve to the remaining flour, to which add 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon mace, 1 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon cloves. Slowly sift the flour into the butter-sugar-egg mixture, stirring thoroughly after each addition. Add the ground almonds, 1 cup best brandy and 1/4 cup rose- or orange-flower water. Beat the whites of 12 eggs and fold lightly but thoroughly into the dough. Then fold in the floured fruits and raisins. Put into buttered pan or pans, lined with buttered brown paper. This quantity makes about 12 lbs. Bake for about 4 hours according to size of pan or pans. A fruit cake should have an inch of almond paste spread over the top before frosting the entire cake. This is not gilding the lily, it is only bringing its perfume more pronouncedly to your attention.”

From the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook

It’s a disconcerting layout to follow. The immediate stumbling block for me was citron, which is a rare variety of citrus, not readily available in Australia. Candied or glazed citron (which is what I’m sure Alice meant) isn’t either. Interestingly the French word for lemon is “citron” but Alice can’t have meant that because her stash already included candied lemon peel.

So, skipping the citron means you’d have to substitute something else. To complicate matters, Alice doesn’t stipulate what size cake pan or pans to use, what baking temperature is required and a cooking time of “about 4 hours” is a bit vague for a fruitcake novice. Still, with her experience and skill she could hardly be expected to spoon feed fruitcake dunderheads like me, especially with all the feverish excitement of American soldiers and jeeps and liberation rising anew in her mind.

But these grey areas in Alice’s recipe worried me, to the extent I decided to consult the infinite resources of Google to see how her recipe compared to others. A search returned about seven million results, most of which were recipes, when what I needed was a basic methodology. Factors like the proportion of fruit to batter, the interchangeability or otherwise of types of fruit, the dividing or not of eggs, mixing time, pan size, and most importantly oven temperature and baking time. Details, in other words, that Alice had skipped. 

Nevertheless, I forged ahead. Being of the school that advocates the addition of alcohol to food can only be advantageous, I gave my fruit a liberal soaking for several days in what might not have qualified as Alice’s “best” brandy but was as good as I could afford. Once blended, the cake dough looked good – a rich dense mélange of glistening fruit and creamy, buttery richness. 

Delicious aromas filled the house as the cake baked and when I took it out of the oven, it looked wonderful – sumptuously browned, glossy and heavy with promise – more than worthy of any Christmas table or liberating army. Once it had cooled down, I began removing it from the tin. It was at that point I realised all was not well. The cake seemed glutinously attached to its protective layers of buttered paper. Getting it right side up on a plate in one piece proved problematic. It felt worryingly sticky, adhering in clumps to my fingers as I tried to wrestle it into shape. It pulsed with the threat of disintegration. Ignorant as I was about fruitcake baking, I knew this was wrong. Fatalistically I shoved a knife into it. Inside, as if to spite me, it still smelt delectable, but it wasn’t cake. It might have been pudding, if it hadn’t had the consistency of stodge, defying any attempt to be sliced or even shovelled up.

Now, I’m not bitter. I don’t blame Alice. It was preordained disaster, in that I had no clue what I was doing, to the point where, even now I can’t figure out what went wrong. Many things can go wrong with fruitcake of course but by then the idea of autopsy was anathema. Alice’s lovingly anticipated fruitcake no doubt went down a treat with the General and his troops. I’d love to know. And also to know whether anyone out there has tried it for themselves and how they’ve fared.

I haven’t conceded defeat however and an exhaustive perusal of those 7 million recipes (or at least a few of them) has pointed me in the right direction. Below is the kind of general methodology that might have helped to avert my fruitcake shipwreck.

Preparing Fruit

What fruit you use is up to you. It should be a mix of dried and candied (e.g. raisins, currants, apricots, prunes, glacé cherries, candied citrus peel) and for a 20cm cake tin you need about 1kg in total.

Marinate it in a strong liquor of your choice (brandy, cognac, rum, whisky, sherry) or if you prefer alcohol-free, orange or apple juice. Let it soak for anywhere from 2 hours to several days or even weeks (the alcohol will act as a preservative).

Baking tin

Size and shape are optional, but whichever you use it needs to be greased and double lined with brown or baking paper, leaving a tall rim of paper extending above the tin to protect the top of the cake as it bakes. Some bakers advocate also covering the top of the cake with baking paper with a small hole cut out in the centre to let the steam escape. Some (perhaps of the Julia Child persuasion) even suggest wrapping the tin itself with a couple of layers of paper and securing with string.

Ingredients

Use equal amounts of flour, butter and brown sugar and balance with an egg to every 50g of butter.

Nuts are optional, most recipes suggest almonds, pecans or walnuts roughly chopped (toasted will give more flavour). Add approximately 2 cups of nuts at the same time as you add the fruit.

Type of sugar – brown (dark or light) adds more flavour than white.

Spices – an assortment of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, mace, etc. 

Optional additions – vanilla or almond essence, marmalade, orange juice, lemon zest, orange zest, treacle (or molasses, golden syrup, maple syrup or even applesauce) – extra flour may be needed to balance the liquid.

Baking powder and salt seem to be optional, but a teaspoon of baking powder and pinch of salt would be a good idea

Mixing

All ingredients should be at room temperature before mixing.

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly until pale and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time (the batter may curdle but it will right itself when flour is added). No recipe I’ve seen (other than Alice’s) suggests separating the eggs but it can’t hurt.

Fold in dry ingredients with a metal spoon rather than a wooden one (the metal allows the mixture to retain more air). Don’t overmix – gently fold only until everything comes together.

Once the fruit and nuts have been added, the batter should be very thick (the consistency of clotted cream).

Baking

Oven temperature and baking times vary wildly. While most bakers agree it must be low and slow, the recommended temperature range is anywhere between 135 degrees C to 165 degrees C, and the time anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, leaving a lot of latitude and clearly the need to factor in the size of the tin or tins, the foibles of your oven, humidity levels and so on.

Place the pan or pans in the centre of the oven. To keep the cake moist, place a tray of hot water at the bottom of the oven (but check to make sure it hasn’t evaporated before the cake is done).

Knowing whether your cake is done or not depends on your baking intuition and fate, or it may as well. Some say the tried and tested skewer or toothpick trick is best. Others suggest inserting a knife at a sharp angle into one of the small cracks/crevices on the top of the cake, then pushing it right down and leaving for a few seconds to see if it comes out clean. Still others advise it’s the way the surface of the cake looks. It should be well browned with a few small cracks.

Cool cake thoroughly after baking on a cake rack.

Feeding (with alcohol)

Some bakers start this process while the cake is still warm. Others wait until it’s completely cooled. Use a toothpick or skewer to poke holes in the cake and sprinkle with a tablespoon of brandy or rum or whatever liquor you prefer every week or so while the cake is maturing.

Storing

Wrap in liquor dampened cheesecloth, greaseproof paper or plastic wrap plus a layer of foil and store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Don’t wrap directly in foil which might react with the acid in the cake.

Check cake once a week and brush with more liquor if desired then rewrap.

Some claim fruitcake will keep and mature for up to a year and it can be frozen.

No-one needs any advice about eating the end result of course, which should be moist, delectable and bursting with the irresistible flavour of well-marinated fruit, spice, and that dark treacly richness unique to fruitcake. While Alice recommends covering the cake with almond paste and frosting, stating it’s “not gilding the lily”, I disagree. With the memory of almost losing teeth trying to gnaw through my grandmother’s rock-hard Christmas cake icing, I’ve decided a good fruitcake needs no embellishment.