I should have taken a picture, but it wouldn't have captured the insanely heady aroma of gently bubbling cherries and orange peels simmering on my woodstove. Can you imagine the smells of citrus and fruit over the more subtle hints of a wood fire? I raved about this for weeks to all my friends and family. today in the permies daily newsletter Tina made a comment about delicious aromas for a chilly day and I need to post this here.
My 12-year old autistic child, not as picky an eater as some I've heard about, but pretty picky none the less, asked me to make a fruitcake. I don't know how she got it in her head, maybe she saw one in a store or saw a picture. I gently expressed my concern about American fruitcakes and how i dislike every candied dried fruit I have ever tried. I tried not to use "disgust" or "hate", you learn to avoid those words when you have a picky eater in the house. but I am up for baking challenges most days, so I gathered a recipe and the ingredients. I asked my kid if she wanted a northern-european style "stollen" or a southern-european style "panettone" and what fruit options we wanted. she settled on the panettone (faster to make, so no problem) with cherries and raisins. I didn't want to buy candied cherries or candied orange peel at the store, so I figured, no problem, I'll make them myself.
And then we hit a snag. my electric stove wasn't working. according to my instructions I had to soak my raisins and cherries before candying them, so I had this fruit soaked on my counter and no way to candy them. I've cooked on a woodstove before, but mine isn't really built for cooking, it is intended for heating the house. I weighed my options and decided it was the only thing I could do. I put three pans on the woodstove and started candying the fruit and citrus peels. there is nothing that could have prepared me. Words fail to capture how my house smelled. I candy nuts all the time. I have candied orange and lemon peel before on my electric stove and it was never that transcendent. Something about the combination of fruit plus the hint of wood smoke lingering from the last time I stoked the fire... I just don't know how to describe it.
I don't know the words to use, but at some level it clicked in my head. My ancestors made cakes like this, probably candied their own fruit, raised the bread and baked it. this is how their houses smelled on cold winter days, probably going back centuries. what have we given up for the sake of modern conveniences? a store-bought fruitcake, even the expensive imports, has no way to reproduce what I experienced that day. no artificially scented candle has a hope to measure up to that.
The fruitcake turned out fine and was eaten faster than expected. but it was the smells that day that linger in my memory.
