One Table, One World

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Fruitcake: you are doing it wrong.

TheWellSeasonedLibrarian
One Table, One World
9 min readDec 17, 2020

Public Domain photo by TheMightyGrog — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

What the hell is fruitcake, and why you should revisit this age old tradition yourself this Christmas?

For months they have lain in wait, dim shapes lurking in the forgotten corners of houses and factories all over the country and now they are upon us, sodden with alcohol, their massive bodies bulging with strange green protuberances, attacking us in our homes, at our friends’ homes, at our offices — there is no escape, it is the hour of the fruitcake.

Fruitcake is a specific type of cake made with candied or dried fruit, nuts, and spices. Fruitcake is also optionally soaked in spirits such a whiskey or rum and much is made of the potent alcohol content of these dense pemmican like christmas treats. Normally called “Christmas Cake”, in the United Kingdom, some versions may be covered with marzipan, iced and decorated with candied fruit or glazed. From England to Italy to the Middle East, to Mexico and South America there are various versions of a preserved Christmas cake festooned with some sort of preserved fruit, dried or candied.

Fruitcakes are typically served in celebration of weddings and Christmas or kept on hand for guests. The main attribute of a fruitcake is its longevity and ability to be always on hand if the…

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One Table, One World
One Table, One World

Published in One Table, One World

One Table, One World is a place for people from contrasting cultural backgrounds to meet, to laugh, to cook, to heal and most of all to share the stories of their unique journeys from all over the world. Come sit with us.

TheWellSeasonedLibrarian
TheWellSeasonedLibrarian

Written by TheWellSeasonedLibrarian

Dean Jones is a Librarian, Cookbook Reviewer, and writer. Dean lives in the SF Bay Area. wellseasonedlibrarian@gmail.com

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