Vintage Recipe: An Old-Fashioned Jam Cake

Strawberry Jam Cake

With this recipe for an old fashioned jam cake, I’m introducing an occasional feature on older recipes, those from the early to mid 20th Century. And yes, most of them will be on the sweet side.

I love pouring over old cookbooks, especially the ones published by small organizations — churches, historical societies, service leagues. These collections — idiosyncrasies and all — are rich bites of history, telling us how people lived through what they ate.

One example is George Heritage: Treasured Recipes, the book from which this jam cake is taken. It was published in 1979 by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of  Georgia. There are all manner of recipes, from pimento cheese to punch serving 100 people.

And even though convenience foods were well established by the late 1970s, they are not prominent in this cookbook. Not a single recipe calls for cake mix.

Speaking of idiosyncrasies: Contributors are listed by their husbands’ names, with the wives’ first and maiden names in parentheses. A few years ago I would have been annoyed at that. Most newspapers used to behave that way and some still may for all I know. But now, so much time has passed, and there are so many things to worry about in the world, well, it’s not a bother. The quaint tradition reflects a particular time and place in society and I respect its historical value.

Recipe for a Traditional, Old-Fashioned Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Jam

The fragrance of a hand-picked, perfectly ripe strawberry is enough to make you swoon.

We try to preserve that strawberry goodness for cold winter days, to comfort ourselves with biscuits, toast or peanut butter sandwiches.

Some friends love strawberry jam so much that they recently put up 71 jars in the freezer. It is a much-loved summer ritual for mom and the kids. They need a lot of jam because, on a typical day, this family of 6 can easily go through one half-pint jar in a single sitting.

When asked how long she expects this arsenal to last, my friend replied, “I hope until spring.”

My freezer isn’t very spacious, so a couple years ago I started making strawberry jam in the traditional, old-fashioned way, without pectin.

I did this primarily because I decided the old-fashioned style tastes better. It has a deeper, more concentrated strawberry flavor.


The other reason is that a package of pectin is yet one more thing to forget at the supermarket.

The “open kettle” or “long boil” method is neither difficult nor time consuming. I made three jars of strawberry jam in about one hour.