This was a Civil War-era recipe. They would not have been including any red or black dudes.
Sultana grapes are supposedly quite different from other green grapes in their pale golden colour (when fresh).
UK sultanas look like mid-tan coloured raisins - like this:
Sometimes they are a little paler and softer/larger, but not through chemical treatment.
I went shopping this morning and I did see golden raisins this at the supermarket (in the asian section, along with green raisins, which looked like they might be artificially coloured, but there was nothing to confirm or deny this on the pack)
Who do you think had to cook the damned thing?
When currant refers to dried grapes, it is for a small, dark raisin made from tiny champagne grapes (a misnomer as well, but we’ll leave that aside), not the larger dark raisins we usually see in the US. It is pretty clear that what is used in British scones are smaller than standard US raisins.
But the question is, what did people in the middle of the 19th century in America think they were?
Probably the same as we do in present-day UK - a dried grape.
My guess is that whatever they were they were probably dried. Since it’s a Christmas cake, I doubt that fresh currants (or fresh grapes) would be available in December.
Looking at the recipes on Account Suspended, some recipes call for both dried grapes (raisins) and dried currents, so it sounds like that there was a difference recognized between the two.
(woo hoo! My first post!)
I hadn’t even considered the time of year - good catch!
Welcome, slightly askew!
So if the recipe calls for both raisins and currants, should you alternate the currants or plug them in directly?
Someone was going to go there eventually. Might as well be me.
I think we have forgotten the fact that when “currents” were mentioned back then they were always referring to dried grapes, and not dried black or red currents (Ribes). Don’t forget that as well as currents there are other types of dried grapes, such a raisins and sultanas.
Just as an aside, do you Brits use the term “raisin” in addition to sultana and currant? If so, does it refer to the large black raisins we see over here? I remember helping my English mother make mincemeat with sultanas and currants, but I can’t remember if we added raisins as well.
ETA: Duh, missed post above.
As you can see all three types are on sale here :- Tesco
As an aside was it possible to successfully dry red and black currents (ribes) in the 19th century?. The high sugar content in grapes means that they will dry and keep for a long time. Was this the case with ribes? I imagine with modern freeze-drying methods it is possible, but I have never seen them on sale.
All of the other ingredients are for a traditional-style fruit cake. The currants in this recipe have to be the dried grape kind - or their omission requires an explanation.
Welcome, slightly. 
I thought it was a perfectly plum(b) post, identifying a dimension I hadn’t even considered.
Is that too much of a reach for a pun?
It took me a while to get that.
I feel like Mr. Spock at a Knock Knock Joke symposium.
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Yes, dried.
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Yes, fruitcake. Most “special occasion” cakes were; this goes back to the Middle Ages. Lighter cakes became populular towards the end of the Victorian period.
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Oven temperature was very poorly defined; no-one had thermometers, so correct temperature was judged by how long you could keep your hand in the oven, how long it took a scrap of paper to turn brown, etc. Fruitcakes tend to be baked at low tempertaures, around 250 degrees.
If anybody’s interested, I just put it in the oven - cut the recipe in half and it filled three loaf pans. No citron - the citron chunks in fruitcake are the devil’s gummy bears. Meant to make my own candied orange and lemon peel but ran out of time, so I had to use the gross corn-syruped lemon stuff and couldn’t even find orange peel. But I figured that the antebellum housewife had to make do, so it’s period.
There are a LOT of dried currants in it. Seriously, a LOT.
Were those “dried currants” vine fruits, or where they the red/black current (ribe) sort?
I used the raisin-ish ones. (Frankly, I don’t know where I’d have found the others anyway.)
It’s interesting. I’m taking it to the boyfriend’s live show taping today to see if anybody will eat it. I’d really call it “currant cake” rather than fruitcake, I think - that’s what dominates. It’s quite dense and you’d expect it to be less-sweet like a coffee cake, but it sort of is and sort of isn’t.