Before the American Revolution, this dense, sour-leavened fruit and spice cake was called muster cake, as it was traditionally baked by colonial women for men who were mustered, meaning summoned for military training by order of British troops.

Originally, the cake was filled with butter and eggs, sweetened with unrefined cane sugar or molasses, spiked with brandy and wine, flavored with allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and coriander, and lastly - studded with dried fruit like raisins, currants, prunes, or whatever was readily available. Later on, according to the Yankee Magazine Cookbook, the cake became a popular dessert “served either at the church supper preceding the town meeting or sold outside the polling place, like a one-cake bake sale, to help sustain voters”—after which it was aptly renamed to election cake.