The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
141-year-old fruitcake reflects love of family you can’t sink your teeth into
TECUMSEH, MICH. — If fruitcakes improve with age, a Tecumseh, Mich., family may have the finest in the land. It’s certainly one of the oldest — 141 years.
What would possess the seemingly normal Ford clan to hold on to a fossilized dessert for five generations? In a word, love.
The cake was originally preserved to honor its maker, Fidelia Ford.
Now it’s being kept in tribute to Ford’s great-grandson, Morgan, who was its biggest champion until his passing in 2013.
“He took care of it to the day he left the earth,” said Morgan’s daughter Julie Ruttinger. “We knew it meant a lot to him.”
Despite the sweet sentiment, the years haven’t been kind to the confection.
The round brown slab is hard as a rock with a blistered surface. A date and maybe a clove are visible.
Guinness World Records doesn’t keep track of the life spans of fruitcakes. As for cakes in general, the oldest is 4,176 years old, the Guinness organization said. Once tucked in an Egyptian tomb during the time of a pharaoh, the world’s oldest cake is now displayed in a food museum in Switzerland.
The story of the Ford fruitcake begins with Fidelia, a mother of seven who was born on the Fourth of July.
The farmer’s wife was a wunderkind around a wood stove in her Berkey,
Ohio home, according to family lore. Every year she whipped up a fruitcake that would age for a year before being served the following holiday season.
After making a cake in 1878, the 65-year-old matriarch died before it could be eaten. When the holidays arrived, the family no longer regarded her handiwork as food. They saw it as a legacy.
Despite its age, the fruitcake has had only two homes, the Berkey, Ohio, farmhouse and a Tecumseh bungalow.
The farmhouse was home to Fidelia, then her children, then her children’s children.
When her grandson Lyman had a stroke in 1952, he asked his son, Morgan,
to become custodian of the candied-fruit concoction, relatives said.
Morgan stored it on the top shelf of a china cabinet in the dining room of his Tecumseh home, where it remains today. The reason for the lofty perch was to keep it from the prying hands of his five children.
With the passing of Morgan, Ruttinger has become the latest bard of the family foodstuff. It’s important to her because it was important to her dad, she said.
After being a part of Morgan’s life for 93 years, the cake joined him in death. When he died, his family tucked a piece into his jacket pocket. An Egyptian pharaoh would have approved.