Fruit Cocktail Cake

In America, in the 1950's and 1960's, many housewives made simple cakes using canned fruits they had in their kitchen pantry, such as canned peaches or pears. These cakes were inexpensive to prepare and were a quick solution for a last minute family dessert. This is a recipe for an easy but lovely tasting cake made with canned fruit cocktail.

Why is it called fruit cocktail, instead of simply fruit salad? Fruit cocktail was often served as an appetizer, so it is “cocktail” in the sense of “An appetizer made by combining pieces of food, such as fruit or seafood,” and as in Shrimp Cocktail.

The canning industry generally agrees that fruit cocktail was developed as a way make use of the fruit scraps left when bruised or otherwise damaged fruits could not be used in canning. Fruit cocktail has been a staple of the canned fruit industry since at least the 1940s, and was one of the most popular products Del Monte produced at the plant, from 1941 until the plant’s closure in 1999.

What company first came up with the mix of fruits, and named the result “fruit cocktail”, is not absolutely certain. Here are the contenders:

1893: Canner J.C. Ainsley of Campbell, California began marketing a canned “fruit salad” in 1893, under the Golden Morn label. According to the Campbell Historical Museum, the fruit salad contained cherries as well as diced fruits. The name was not fruit cocktail; however, the Golden Morn Fruit Cocktail Label below, from the San Jose Museum, purports to be from 1920.

1930: Herbert Gray of San Jose’s Barron-Gray Packing Company. A 1958 article in the journal Canner and Packer, “100 Years of Canning in the West,” credited Gray with invention of fruit cocktail in 1930. Gray himself restated this in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News in 1969.

1938: Calpak’s “new” Fruit Cocktail debuted under the Del Monte label in 1938.

TBD: Food science academics give credit for fruit cocktail to Dr. William V. Cruess, a pioneer in the field and professor at U.C. Berkeley from 1911 until 1954. Dr. Cruess’ research focused on the use of fruit culls (culling out the bruised and damaged) and by-products.

It may be that Herbert Gray or Del Monte read his recommendations in a trade article.

Whomever the father of fruit cocktail may be, consumers were introduced to the product as a stylish dessert suitable for formal dinner parties and entertaining. The original fruit cocktail sat in a sugar syrup. More recently, with consumer demands for less sugar, lower-sugar varieties are available in natural fruit juices (“no sugar added,” although fruit juice has natural sugar). The difference between fruit cocktail and fruit salad is that the latter contains larger pieces of fruit, while fruit cocktail is diced into like-size pieces.

In the 1930s, canned foods were appreciated for their convenience and did not have the “not as good as fresh” association that evolved in the 1970s, thanks to the proselytizing of Alice Waters and the evolution of “California cuisine.”

Fruit Cocktail Cake
from https://www.southernplate.com/

To convert a 9x13 inch cake recipe to a 9x9 inch pan, reduce all ingredients by approximately 30% (multiply by 0.7). A 9x9 pan has about 81 square inches of surface area compared to 117 in a 9x13, meaning a 9x9 pan is roughly 70% of the size. You will need to adjust baking time.

CAKE:
2 cups self rising flour (or 2 cups all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 3/4 teaspoon salt)
15 ounce fruit cocktail undrained
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 +1/2 cup sugar

SAUCE:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 +1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, place all cake ingredients and beat at low speed until blended. Scrape down sides and beat again at low speed for one minute more. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, combine all sauce ingredients in a medium sized saucepan. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Once mixture is boiling, continue stirring and boil for 1-2 minutes. Pour over hot cake and quickly spread with a spatula for even coverage.

Serves 10