A Recipe from the Oregon Trail

Cooking on the Oregon Trail was very different from cooking at home.  Instead of using a brick oven or a wood stove like they were used to, emigrant women had to do their baking in a Dutch oven, an iron pot with a lid.  Dutch ovens could be used for cooking soups, boiling vegetables, or baking breads, biscuits or even cakes for special occasions. 

Pioneer women used Dutch ovens like these for baking.  Photograph courtesy of Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.
 

To bake a cake, the emigrant would first build a fire, letting some good coals form.  Then she would heat her Dutch oven over a pile of coals until it got hot.  Next she placed the cake batter in the Dutch oven, put the lid on, and heaped hot coals on top of the lid so the oven would be heated on the top and the bottom.  In half an hour she’d have a cake! A pioneer woman might have used a recipe like this one to celebrate a special occasion on the Trail.  It wouldn’t be as fancy as one she would have made at home, but it would seem absolutely elegant compared to the usual diet of hard biscuits and bacon.

Good Fruitcake Without Eggs

• 1 ½ cups brown sugar

• 3 tablespoons melted butter

• 1 cup buttermilk or 1 cup milk mixed with 1 tablespoon vinegar

• 2 cups flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• ½ teaspoon nutmeg

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 cup raisins

• 1 cup chopped walnuts
  

Preheat oven to 350°.

Stir together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda.  Add the milk and melted butter and stir well.

Pour into a greased and floured cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

-Adapted from a recipe in Wagon Wheel Kitchens by Jacqueline Williams