In my nearly twenty years as a chef, I’ve painstakingly exalted almost every classic Southern recipe out there. I plucked banana pudding from the cold case, pumped it with nutty notes of sesame, and heated it up the way my mom used to. I eradicated the mushy, odorous qualities of slow-stewed collards by crisping them up in the fryer. I iced red velvet cake with torched meringue so those eating it would think of snow. I boiled green peanuts with red curry and coconut and dressed up grits so much that they came to define an entire section of my restaurant Chef & the Farmer’s menu. But what I would never touch with a pair of ten-foot tweezers is the ole holiday fruitcake.
It’s not that I hate the stuff. I do prefer a version of its Italian cousin, a product called Panettone from Roy, and have passed it off as fruitcake on many a Christmas morning. But I don’t associate it with any traumatic family memories of tooth loss or forced tasting rituals. In fact, I have a soft spot for the holiday treat that our culture loves to loathe.
My mom notoriously kept so little junk food in our house—except for the Snickers bars she hid with the skill of an addict—that my friends would bring over their own Cheetos and Chips Ahoy! when they visited. There were many times when the only thing I could find to address my nagging sweet tooth was the partially eaten vestige of the previous year’s Christmas fruitcake.
No doubt when I uncovered the frozen quarter log or solid round of the funky relic, muted pleasure washed over me, the slice I “indulged” in momentarily relieving my sugar craving. But let me be clear: Had I discovered instead one of my mom’s candy bars alongside it, I would have picked and devoured the Snickers and probably, after licking the wrapper, a few microplastics. Because even while slightly sugared, those brown slivers, tightly packed with walnuts and neon cherries, tasted oddly healthy. To adolescent me, fruit and nuts did not equal dessert.
Like country ham and sauerkraut, fruitcake developed as an end to the means of preservation before refrigeration, but the fates of the dishes have not played out the same. Today I can walk into any Walmart in the country or any airport in the world and be inundated with shrink-wrapped charcuterie and burgers crowned with kim-chi. You and I both know, though, that I would more easily locate one of my mom’s Snickers bars than find a fruitcake anywhere outside of December. The future isn’t looking up either. My thirteen-year-old son calls fruitcakes “sus.” His twin sister considers them “hard, gross Christmas cakes for old people.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that the flavor of fruitcake hasn’t completely fallen out of favor with modern palates. In fact, I think many of us indulge in it every day.
Best I can tell, fruitcake’s story began with the Roman Empire sending out dense breads or cakes studded with dried fruit and nuts to sustain soldiers in battle. By the Middle Ages, nearly every culture in Europe baked its own nutrient-rich version, with two distinct styles evolving as the fruitcake’s role progressed from survival to celebration. Fruited breads, risen with yeast, laced with spices, and dotted with nuts, became the norm on most of the Continent, while more-dense cakes studded with similar stuff staked their claim in Great Britain. I don’t know the precise moment when British food got its less than stellar reputation, but I imagine it started to take shape right around when traveled palates had the opportunity to compare German stollen coated in powdered sugar and ethereal, airy Italian panettone with the U.K.’s suet and plum puddings.
If you’ve encountered a fruitcake stateside, though, you could probably guess that our typical recipe doesn’t take its cues from the airy, faintly fragrant, fruited breads of continental Europe. Instead, colonists from Great Britain begot ours. We did put our own twist on it, though: With cheap sugar from the Caribbean, we candied nuggets of cherries, pineapple, oranges, and the like into the neon orbs that give our fruitcake its uniquely American soul. Perhaps an early sign of our nation’s penchant for excess, the candied fruit also made the dense bricks look festive. That, combined with the fact that fruitcake is meant to be baked and then “seasoned” for several weeks by brushing it with liquor to preserve it, positioned the bread as an incredibly desirable holiday gift. Maybe too desirable.
By the early 1900s, the U.S. Postal Service started delivering packages in addition to regular mail, and mail-order food became a Big Thing. And liquor-soaked, sugar-packed, damage-resistant fruitcake, with its unparalleled shelf life, became the biggest thing in the category at Christmastime. For about fifty years, many American households fetched at least one from the mail during the holidays. Before long, the colorful tins they were shipped in became as ubiquitous as the fruitcakes themselves. In my grandmother’s house, the tins decorated with images of fat Santas and baby Jesuses found a second life storing sewing supplies, kitchen gadgets, medicine, puzzles, and her own baked goods. Even if no one’s pulse raced at the sight of the fruitcake itself, I’m pretty sure my grandma lit up at the idea of a new Christmas tin to add to her collection.
Was this where things went wrong for the fruitcake? We’ve seen it happen over and over again with celebrities. Everyone finds the hot commodity of the moment charming, talented, and irresistible until they are everywhere we look—even places we don’t. Eventually, oversaturation sets in, and the charisma we couldn’t ignore becomes nails on a chalkboard. We move on, muttering their shortcomings to anyone who will listen.
Maybe we were overexposed, and fruitcake will never rise again. Or maybe, once again, it has evolved. Its nutty-fruity flavors may even be found in your Instacart right now, in its latest form: an energy bar. So go ahead, grab yourself another KIND or Clif. This time, do it for fruitcake’s sake.
