Fruitcake -- that long-suffering holiday icon -- is about to become the annual target of puns pelted by talk show yucksters.
Yep. Fruitcake is once again the "bundt of chokes."Along with SPAM, the bejeweled brick of pecan and pineapple stirs up the pot of opinion like none other. About making fruitcake, some would say "double, double, toil and trouble," while the fruitcake friendly would cheer, "Bon appetit!"
It all boils down to taste. Or lack of.
Fruitcake is either the Barbra Streisand of sweets (assuming you adore Babs) or the Rodney Dangerfield of disgusting.
A love it, or leave-it-in-the-hall- closet kind of thing.
In its never-ending quest to boldly explore where no self-respecting poll has gone before, the Deseret News, getting in the holiday spirit, asked pollster Dan Jones to cut to the truth about fruitcake consumption in Utah.
The survey of 612 Utahns conducted Nov 17-19 revealed that we're not evenly sliced in the fruitcake debate. When asked "Do you like fruitcake?" respondents said (22 percent) that they liked it a lot; (21 percent) agreed they liked fruitcake a little. Adding these numbers together, the Pro Fruitcake gang registers in at 43 percent.
However, the 20 percent of "No No Nanettes" who answered "No not really" to liking fruitcake were strengthened by a bellowing 36 percent of "Definitely Not -- Hate it!"
Thus, the Lips-That-Touch-Fruitcake-Will-Never-Touch-Mine crowd leads at 56 percent.
A small percentage (1 percent) "couldn't say" -- having never tried fruitcake. (Perhaps the question should have been, "Have you ever even dared to think of taking a teensy tiny nibble of the stuff?")
The next question . . . "In the past five years, have you received a fruitcake during the holiday season?" was answered "Yes" by 37 percent. The negatives (61 percent) topped out. One percent didn't know.
If the respondents who received fruitcake answered "Yes," they were asked "Did you eat the fruitcake?" Sixty-five percent did. The no-fruitcake eaters were 34 percent.
And the "don't know, don't remember" group remained at 1 percent.
Dan Jones & Associates continued the fruitcake research by detailing demographics. Males (47 percent) admitted they liked fruitcake "a little and a lot." Females (39 percent) were not as fruitcake-friendly. In fact, 40 percent of females answered they "hate" fruitcake. Men were less vehement at 32 percent.
Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 80 percent gave the stuff a thumbs down. Only 17 percent gave positive affirmation to the nutty loaf. Somewhere out there are 3 percent searching for the meaning of citron.
College grads are more anti-fruitcake -- 61 percent compared to 38 percent fruitcake fanciers. Sixty-nine percent of people with annual incomes ranging from $30,000 to $39,000 do not like fruitcake. The higher the income, the less liable they are to eat fruitcake.
Republicans and Democrats vary just 2 percentage points in their fruitcake flamboyance. However, Democrats are more demonstrative than Republicans in their disgust for the cake.
Denominational differences fall within a few points of each other. Fruitcake devotion and religion seem to fall on opposing sides -- good and bad (and in some cases, the ugly). Protestants (34 percent) said they "Definitely hate fruitcake." Following were the 33 percent LDS admitting they didn't like fruitcake. Twenty-seven percent of the Catholics polled were repelled by fruitcake.
Writer Calvin Trillin theorizes that there is really only one fruitcake, which gets passed around from one family to the next.
Perhaps that's the problem.
We recently placed an order with the Collin Street Bakery, considered by serious foodies to be the primo.
How did we select Collin Street from the scores of others available by mail?
Scientifically.
Collin Street owner William McNutt Jr., whose grandfather bought the business in 1946, is quoted as saying he's only refused one fruitcake order over the past 30 years: A request from the Ayatollah Khomeini.
"Too good for him," he said.