A History Of Fruitcake
Discover the delicious history of fruitcake.
by Esme Addison
There’s a moment every December when you know the season has officially arrived. For me, growing up in North Carolina, it wasn’t the first snowfall or even the Christmas lights going up on the neighbor’s house. It was when my mother or father brought home those rectangular bricks of Claxton fruitcake, and cartons of eggnog.
I’ll admit it, fruitcake has a reputation problem. Johnny Carson built entire comedy bits around the idea that there’s only one fruitcake in the world and people just keep passing it around. In Manitou Springs, Colorado, they host an annual fruitcake toss where unwanted loaves meet their end via catapult. And yes, there are fruitcakes that don’t taste good.
But the good ones? Soft, moist, dense, fruity, full of that unmistakable Christmas flavor that lingers on your tongue long after the first bite. Despite its polarizing reputation, fruitcake has earned its place at the holiday table through thousands of years of history. And that’s a story worth telling.
Ancient Origins: The Original Energy Bar
Long before protein bars and trail mix, ancient Romans were fueling their conquests with something remarkably similar to fruitcake. They created a dense mixture called satura, mashed barley combined with pomegranate seeds, raisins, and pine nuts. It wasn’t exactly what we’d recognize as cake today, but it served a crucial purpose: portable, long-lasting sustenance for soldiers on the march.
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The genius of this early fruitcake was in its preservation. Without refrigeration, fresh foods spoiled quickly. But dried fruits and nuts could last for months, providing essential nutrients and energy. The Romans understood that combining these ingredients into a dense, compact form created something that could travel well and keep indefinitely.
As the Roman Empire expanded and eventually fell, these preservation techniques spread throughout Europe. By the Middle Ages, as trade routes opened up and dried fruits became more widely available in Western Europe, the concept of fruited breads began to take hold in various forms across the continent.
European Evolution: A Cake for Every Country
Medieval Europe embraced the fruitcake concept, but each region put its own spin on the formula. What emerged was a collection of distinct traditions, each reflecting local ingredients and tastes.
In 13th century Sienna, Italy, bakers created panforte—literally “strong bread.” This dense, sweet-and-spicy cake packed an intense flavor punch and became a regional specialty that’s still made today. Travel north to Dresden, Germany, and you’d find stollen, a tapered loaf coated with melted butter and powdered sugar. Dating back to the 1400s, stollen has a more bread-like consistency than its Italian cousin and remains such a beloved tradition that Dresden still hosts an annual stollen festival.
England developed its own version in plum pudding, a dense, dark cake that became central to British Christmas celebrations. This tradition would travel far beyond England’s shores. In the Caribbean Islands, the people of color who were indentured servants and enslaved – and their descendants transformed British plum pudding into black cake, a boozy replica where the fruit soaks in rum for months, sometimes even a full year, before baking.
By the 18th and 19th centuries, fruitcake had become firmly associated with special occasions throughout Europe and its colonies. Weddings, holidays, and important celebrations called for fruitcake. And for good reason, the ingredients were expensive. Imported dried fruits, quality nuts, exotic spices, and spirits made fruitcake a grand indulgence. It was a luxury item, a rare treat worth savoring slowly, much like how some families today still treat certain holiday foods as something special, not to be consumed carelessly.
Fruitcake Comes to America
European immigrants brought their fruitcake traditions to the New World, where the cake continued to evolve. Exactly how fruitcake became exclusively associated with Christmas in America remains something of a mystery. Perhaps it was the British influence of Christmas pudding, or maybe it was simply that the expensive ingredients made it suitable only for the most important celebration of the year.
The early 20th century brought a significant shift. Mass-produced, mail-order fruitcakes became widely available, making what was once a luxury accessible to nearly everyone. But this democratization came with a cost. The image of fruitcake began to shift toward those dry, leaden cakes encrusted with garish candied fruits and pecans, the ones that give fruitcake its bad name today.
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Yet here’s the thing: some of those mail-order companies have been in business for decades, even over a century. They must be doing something right. The difference between a good fruitcake and a bad one is vast, and quality matters. A well-made fruitcake, with the right ratio of fruit to cake, proper moisture, and careful aging, is an entirely different experience from the doorstop versions that became punchlines.
Southern Fruitcake Tradition
If fruitcake has a spiritual home in America, it might just be Claxton, Georgia, population around 2,500, but known far and wide as the “Fruitcake Capital of the World.”
The story begins in 1910 when Savino Tos, an Italian pastry maker, immigrated to the United States. After settling in Claxton, drawn by the friendly locals and the opportunity to open the small agricultural town’s first bakery, Savino offered customers a selection of pastries and homemade ice cream. But it was his specialty fruitcakes, made each fall, that people really looked forward to. Based on his favorite pound cake recipe and incorporating a mixture of raisins, pecans, and candied fruits, Savino’s cakes quickly became a beloved holiday tradition.
In 1945, when Savino retired, he passed the bakery to Albert Parker, a long-standing employee. Albert recognized that many items formerly available only at local bakeries were suddenly appearing in grocery stores nationwide. He made a bold decision: shift focus entirely to large-scale fruitcake production, enabling the company to distribute to a much wider audience.
Albert’s marketing instincts were sharp. He created packaging emblazoned with a now-iconic horse-drawn buggy, highlighting the company’s traditional values. The festive red and white stripes evoked the holidays while making the cakes instantly recognizable on store shelves. That familiar rectangular brick wrapped in cellophane began showing up in homes across the South every December, a signal that the season had officially arrived.
The Claxton Bakery recipe today is a modern adaptation of Savino’s original formula, focusing on a higher ratio of fruits and nuts. Their “light” cakes are 70 percent fruit and nuts—one bite reveals crunchy, earthy pecans (Georgia pecans, naturally), chewy papaya, pineapple, and orange, plus rich raisins and cherries. They also offer a “dark” fruitcake that ups the spice blend and incorporates ribbons of molasses straight into the batter for a richer taste.
Albert’s family continues to run the business, and though little has changed in their celebrated recipe, they’ve experienced steady, sustained growth. During the busy baking season from mid-August through December, the small-town bakery welcomes more than 100 seasonal employees who work alongside year-round staff to prep, bake, package, and ship fruitcakes. They produce around 3 million pounds of fruitcake annually—during peak season, upward of 65,000 pounds a day.
In the South, there’s also a preference for bourbon when it comes to “seasoning” fruitcakes. The tradition of making fruitcakes weeks or even months ahead, then feeding them regular spirit baths, creates a depth of flavor that improves with time. It’s this patient, deliberate process that separates a memorable fruitcake from a forgettable one.
The Art Of The Fruitcake
What makes a truly good fruitcake? It starts with the right ingredients, quality candied fruits, fresh nuts, the proper blend of spices, and good spirits. I can’t stress that enough. And it’s my belief that if you’ve tasted a fruitcake that wasn’t delicious it’s because the baker used cheap ingredients like fruit mix drenched in corn syrup and colored with artificial dies.
The technique matters just as much.
Traditional fruitcake preparation involves carefully folding fruits and nuts into a rich batter, then baking at a low temperature to ensure even cooking without drying out the cake. Nothing worse than a hard, dry fruit cake.
Once baked, the real magic begins: aging. A freshly baked fruitcake is good, but a properly aged one is transcendent.
The aging process involves wrapping the cooled cake in cheesecloth soaked in brandy, rum, or bourbon, then storing it in an airtight container. Every week or two, the cake gets “fed” with more spirits. Over time, the alcohol mellows, the flavors meld and deepen, and the texture becomes incredibly moist and dense. Some bakers age their fruitcakes for months.This is what creates that soft, moist, fruity texture, the hallmark of a well-made fruitcake.
A Tradition Worth Keeping
Every holiday season, my mother bakes her own fruitcake. And she also make fruitcake cookies. This is in addition to buying fruitcakes from Southern Supreme (another family favorite and NC-based bakery). Fruitcake has survived for thousands of years, from Roman soldiers to medieval feasts to modern American holidays. That kind of staying power doesn’t happen by accident. Despite the jokes and the tosses and the reputation, fruitcake endures because for many of us, it’s more than just a dessert. It’s a marker of the season, an anchor to memories, a connection to tradition.
I’ll be honest: I’m the only one in my immediate family who still eats fruitcake regularly. But I know others who share the love, family members who still buy fruit cake every December, who understand that certain flavors don’t just taste like Christmas, they are Christmas.
There’s no need to convert the skeptics. Some people will never understand the appeal, and that’s fine. But for those of us who grew up waiting for fruitcake to appear, who know the difference between a bad fruitcake and a good one, who appreciate the weight of history in every dense, fruity slice, we know the truth.
Christmas simply isn’t Christmas without it. And after thousands of years, fruitcake isn’t going anywhere.
Memories like these are what inspire the collections at Cozyville by Due South, our greeting card line. The Yuletide Kitchen Card Collection was born from those moments when fruitcake and eggnog signaled the season had officially arrived, a way to celebrate the flavors and traditions that anchor Christmas for so many of us.
Because some memories deserve to be remembered, shared, and passed down, one fruitcake-loving generation at a time.
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