“An evolutionary history, with recipes.”
The authors take us on an interesting odyssey of cake baking back to the 1600s. No doubt
there were cakes baked before that time, but written recipes do not exist for them. The earliest
recipes used strange words and strange measurements, but throughout this book the authors
have determined what was meant in each case. Indeed, some recipes of the modern era may
seem strange also. Each recipe, the ingredients, the oven heat, the method of mixing and the
finished product is well analysed.
The book looks at cakes; cakes baked for a particular season at that. The time portrayed at the
start of the book tells of a time when a Christmas cake was unknown and the pudding (that
was the cake of the time) was baked for Twelfth Day (or Twelfth Night). They were called a
Twelve Cake.
Over time, raising agents and methods changed, ingredients and their quality changed, ovens
improved, and the cake became a Christmas cake as the Twelfth Night celebration fell into
oblivion. Cooks were able to write recipes down, and noted adjustments for what ingredients
were available and affordable. They swapped their favourite recipes with friends, and passed
them onto to magazines, newspapers and community fund-raising cook books.
The authors have worked out plausible family trees for the most popular recipes and are able
to show how a recipe moved from town to town and country to country.
Hundreds of recipes were investigated to produce this book and each step along the way is
explained. Although the book contains quite a few recipes, it is not so much a recipe book as
a “who dunnit”, why and how. It makes for very interesting reading, whether you be a cook or
not.
Well recommended.
There is an autographed copy of this book in the Hampden Library.
Reviewer: Trevor
ZNF 641.86 LEA, Published by Otago University Press. ISBN 978 1 877578 19 9
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