Fruit cake

Fruit cake

Traditional American Fruitcake
Alternative names	Traditional American Fruitcake
Type	Cake
Place of origin	Global
Region or state	Various
Created by	originally from Roman times
Main ingredients	Candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices, sugars, flour
Variations	iced fruit cake, diabetic fruit cake, gluten free fruit cake, lactose free fruit cake

Fruitcake (or fruit cake) is a cake made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices, and (occasionally) soaked in spirits. A cake that simply has fruit in it as an ingredient can also be colloquially called a fruit cake. In the United Kingdom, certain rich versions may be iced and decorated.

Fruit cakes are typically served in celebration of weddings and Christmas. Given their rich nature, fruit cake is most often consumed on its own, as opposed to with condiments (such as butter or cream).

The earliest recipe from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added.

Fruit cakes soon proliferated all over Europe. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast. Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the ‘Butter Letter' or Butterbrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruit cakes.

Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created an excess of candied fruit, thus making fruit cakes more affordable and popular.