The Secret history of the Wedding Cake
Stand-up buffet, sit-down supper; British, American, mid-Atlantic: there’s a lot of speculation surrounding the food that guests might expect at the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry this month. One thing’s for sure: there’ll be a wedding cake, and in cakey matters the royal family have always set the fashion for the nation. Dr Annie Gray investigates the history of this centrepiece confection
ILLUSTRATION BY SARA MULVANNY
Cake has been associated with celebration since at least medieval times. Back then, the cakes were actually more like glorified breads: yeasted, fruited and spiced, they were expensive, huge and screamed luxury.
It was under the Tudors that the ‘bride cake’ was first eaten at weddings (the same fortified bread that cropped up at all celebrations).
And brides didn’t just get cake. In the 1660s, Robert May published a recipe for a ‘bride pie’ in The Accomplisht Cook. More like an I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here challenge than a wedding cake, this involved cockscombs, lambs’ testicles, larks, cockles and spices in four pies put together as one. Such creations flourished for a while, but the cake steadily grew in importance.