The
History of the Wedding Cake
By Annee Jones
When I began looking into the tradition of eating cake at weddings, I was surprised to discover such a strange and fascinating history surrounding this custom! For example, in ancient Rome, a marriage was considered “sealed” when a groom smashed a barley cake over his bride’s head! I'm pretty sure our hairstylists and makeup artists would have a fit if we did that today (not to mention the brides!!!).
In medieval England, a couple used to kiss over a table piled high with bread buns which symbolized prosperity. In France, this type of dessert came to be known as croquembouche and still remains a popular type of fancy pastry to this day. After the wedding, guests who were not yet married would be invited to take a bun or two home to tuck under their pillows for good luck.
Another
early tradition was having two cakes – one for the bride and one for the
groom. A glass ring would be placed within
the bride’s cake and slices passed to all the unmarried young women. Much like our modern tradition of tossing the bouquet, the lady who discovered that her piece contained the ring was considered next to marry.
Cakes at that time didn’t even contain sugar – ingredients ranged from boiled calf’s feet to oysters to lamb testicles! Sugar didn’t became plentiful until the mid-sixteenth century. As most of us know, refined sugar is white in color, whereas unrefined (aka “turbinado”) varieties can be much darker. Having a cake topped with white icing not only alluded to the bride’s virginity but also conveyed the wealth of her family, since refined sugar was an expensive luxury.
The tradition of featuring a cake as a status symbol continued to grow in popularity during the Victorian period in England. Bakers began experimenting with ways to make the dessert bigger and bigger, thus inventing the tiered layer cake. The larger the cake, the wealthier the family and the higher their social standing.
Bakers subsequently realized the top tier could be the perfect platform for featuring delicately crafted, edible art in various shapes and arrangements. This in turn gave rise to decorations we recognize today such as sugar roses and tiny figures of the bride and groom, as well as fresh flowers which is particularly common in the Philippines. In China, the couple cuts into the lowest tier first and gives the first slices to their parents and oldest members of their families as a form of honor.
I hope you've enjoyed looking through this fascinating history of old and modern wedding cakes!
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About Me:
Annee Jones is an inspirational romance novelist who enjoys sharing her heart and imagination with others. She is passionate about writing stories that offer hope and encouragement and likes to think of her books as “romance filled with faith and a sprinkle of fairy dust!”
Annee is also a professional book reviewer for Publishers Weekly in the genre of faith-based fiction (fun tidbit: she writes many of the editorial reviews you see on Amazon).
Professionally, Annee works as a disability counselor where she helps her clients navigate through complex medical and legal systems while rediscovering their wholeness in Spirit.
Connect with Annee here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/anneesangelgroup
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAnneeJones
Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-strange-history-of-the-wedding-cake-1-63011094/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_cake
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
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