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 Who
doesn't like cake? Who, when presented with the decadent dark vision
that is devil's food cake, can
truthfully say, "No thanks." And, of course, it simply isn't a birthday
without a cake, blazing with enough candles to roast a small suckling
pig. You'd think they'd always been a feature of dessert. But it's
surprising how recent an addition they really are.
Of course,
the word "cake" has been around for a long time, but what is meant
by it has changed over the centuries. A cake can be anything that
is smoodged together (technical term, there) into a kind of patty.
Think of a cake of soap. The earliest examples were found among
the remains of Neolithic villages where archaeologists have discovered
simple cakes which were made from crushed grains, moistened, compacted
and probably cooked on a hot stone. A modern survivor of this early
manifestation would be oatcakes, though now we think of them more
as a biscuit or cookie. As time passed the variety of goods that
could be made this way grew, some were leavened while some remained
more simple.
 Baking
was always a haphazard affair, however. The elements required had
to be carefully gauged, and in ancient times it was difficult to
control such items as heat and moisture. The ancient Egyptians,
as with so many other things, were the first to regard baking as
an art. They developed reliable cooking methods and early ovens
in which they prepared a great variety of breads that served all
kinds of functions within the meal. Many were sweetened with honey
and eaten as desserts, but although we have plenty of evidence of
the baking process from tomb paintings and we know the ingredients
from those found in tomb offerings, it is difficult to know exactly
what their breads tasted like.
The Classical
era is another matter.
The Greeks
called cakes "plakous," which comes from the word for "flat," and
their cakes were usually combinations of nuts and honey. Chrysippus
of Tyana gives the recipe for a honey nut cake that he tasted in
Crete. To us, it still has more in common with oatcakes, but is
very good. Chrysippus' cakes are unusual, in that he gives us a
fairly thorough recipe. In most cases it's much more difficult to
determine what the dishes actually tasted like, as the accounts
are vague and refer to only one or two key ingredients.
Once we enter
the Roman period things become a little easier. The Latin for cake
was derived from the Greek and became "placenta," but there were
other words for cake too, such as "libum." Cato gives a recipe for
libum in On Agriculture (75 AD), and it seems to be a small cheesecake
sweetened with honey. Libum was primarily used as an offering to
the gods, though there are examples of larger versions being made
for general consumption. Placenta was more complex cheesecake, baked
on a pastry base, or sometimes inside a pastry case. It too was
sweetened with clear honey and was often presented as an offering
at temples. On a more basic level was the "satura," a flat heavy
cake that hearkened back to the earlier Greek recipes, featuring
barley with raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and sweet wine.
The Romans weren't limited to such simple fare, however, and in
the later Empire they became skilled with yeast. The northern and
western barbarians also leavened their bread, though in their case
they used barm, which is a foaming yeast drawn from the top of beer.
As time went on the terms "bread" and "cake" became interchangeable.
The words themselves are of Anglo Saxon origin, and it's probable
that initially the term  "cake"
was used for the smaller breads. They didn't stay small for long,
however, and soon came to resemble what we know call fruit breads;
raised with yeast and including raisins, butter, cream, eggs, spices
and honey or sugar. There are still plenty of examples of this kind
of cake around, including such British staples as tea cakes, which
are actually lightly sweetened fruit buns.
During the
renaissance, Italian cooks became famous for their baking skills
and were hired by households in both England and France. The new
items that they introduced were called "biscuits," though they were
the forerunner of what we now consider to be sponge cake. The earliest
sponge cake recipe in English was recorded by Gervase Markham in
1615. These sponge cakes weren't exactly your Betty Crocker behemoths,
though - they were most likely thin, crisp cakes, more like modern
cookies. Macaroons were developed during this period, as were spiced
buns such as the Easter staple, hot cross buns.
By the middle
of the 18th century, yeast had fallen into disuse as a raising agent
for cakes in favor of beaten eggs. The cooks of the day must have
had arm muscles like Schwarzenegger - it takes an awful lot of beating
by hand to do what we can accomplish in a few minutes with an electric
mixer! Once as much air as possible had been beaten in, the mixture
would be poured into molds, often elaborate creations, but sometimes
as simple as two tin hoops, set on parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
It is from these cake hoops that our modern cake pans developed.
Amazingly,
it seems that the idea of cake as a dessert was particularly late
in coming. Initially, they were served as a snack with sweet wine,
much as madeira cake still is. Large, elaborate cakes would often
be made as part of the display for banquets, but these were rarely
eaten. The style of eating since the Middle Ages had required a
selection of dishes to be on the table all at the same time. These
would be removed and replaced with another vast array, but in the
mid-nineteenth century the fashion changed and Service à la Russe
became all the rage. Now the meal was served by servants, bringing
diners individual dishes (similar to modern restaurant service),
and while such a performance wasn't within the reach of most people,
it did result in a feature that everyone could enjoy - the dessert
course. Now the decorated cake that we all know and love finally
put in its appearance.
 There
was only one thing to be dealt with - all that pesky whisking. We'd
have to wait quite a while for electric beaters, but bicarbonate
of soda made its first appearance in the 1840s and was soon followed
by baking powder. Easier access to white flour, granulated sugar
and shortening all added to the cake's popularity and such favorites
as the Victoria Sandwich became familiar sights at tea time and
at dinner tables. Victorian ingenuity also brought us ovens with
reliable temperature control (though my mother can remember my great-grandmother
gauging the temperature of the oven by sticking her hand in it),
which brought complex baking within the reach of the ordinary housewife.
From the middle
of the nineteenth century cake baking, along with pastry making
became one of the main tests for the new housewife. Was she a cook?
Could she make an airy sponge, a sinful chocolate confection…or
would the family be spending a lot of time buying buns at the bakers
shop? See how you'd shape up. We've included a selection of cake
recipes through the ages, so you can have a go at eating your way
through time!
Prehistoric
Blaanda Bread
Ancient
Greece
Honey Nut Cake
Ancient
Rome
Libum (Cato's Cheesecake)
Middle
Ages/Rennaissance
Yorkshire Tea Cakes
Macaroons
18th
Century
Hedgehog Sponge Cake
Madeira Cake
19th
Century
Victoria Sandwich
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