Dr Alysa Levene of Oxford Brookes University on the development of the popular baked food from the Ancient World to the 20th Century Opening image and inset illustrations: © Getty Images Written by Tom Garner 40 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 40 20/11/2019 17:33 A Delicious History of Cake EXPERT BIO ALYSA LEVENE Alysa Levene is the author of Cake: A Slice of History, which is published by Headline Publishing. To purchase a copy visit: www.headline.co.uk ake is one of the most beloved treats in the world. It’s hugely adaptable and made from recipes of a variety of ingredients and methods. Often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions, cake’s influence is farreaching and this is deeply rooted in history. Unlike other sweet foodstuffs like chocolate, cake has a past that stretches back for millennia. One person who has extensively studied the development of this popular delicacy is Dr Alysa Levene. The author of Cake: A Slice of History, she reveals the development of cake from antiquity through its rapid evolution in the 18th Century to the Second World War. It’s a story of myths, rituals, technology and, of course, mass consumption. How important has cake been throughout human history? What do we know about some of the earliest examples of cakes from the Ancient World and what they looked like? There’s a big distinction to be made between things that were called “cakes” but were really cakes of bread, and things that were “special”. If we’re thinking about things that were a bit enriched or sweetened, i.e. doing something more than filling the belly, then we have evidence from the Ancient Egyptian era. People were then making cakes for lots of different purposes. They served specific functions such as for feasting, parts of religious rites or given to nourish people in the afterlife. After them, the Classical civilisations were much more advanced in food terms and had an amazingly imaginative array of celebratory cakes, while in much of Europe there was nothing. It was still poorly ground grains that were baked on a hearthstone and weren’t sweet at all. So when the Romans occupied Britain there was more of that rich heritage, which was totally lost again when they left. The native cake heritage of lots of places in Europe didn’t have the wherewithal to bring that into their diets for a long time afterwards. How did cakes evolve during the medieval period? It was a very socially stratified story. Cake can only become what we think of as cake when 2x © Alamy I think that’s a really interesting question. Cake really isn’t important at all nutritionally, but symbolically it seems to have had an enormous importance. For so much of human history people barely had enough to eat, so cake was either impossible to achieve or just the last priority on their minds. However, the idea of something that was sweet, special and something that’s more than just a snack seemed to be important. It was, and is, a rallying point for communities, social functions and family occasions. Therefore, it was even more important than I thought when I started conceiving the idea of the book. The emerging popularity of tea parties in the 18th Century helped increase the social consumption of cake The Victoria sandwich cake is older than the queen it is named for and is now a symbol of British cuisine 41 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 41 20/11/2019 17:33 people have the richer ingredients and baking equipment. A lot of people didn’t have any means to bake a cake. You might be able to do it in a fire with the pot turned over to make a small oven. Otherwise, you would take it to the local bake house, or if you lived in a castle or monastery you might have your own oven. As people started to get access to sugar, that made it sweeter. In a rural environment people had more access to eggs and butter and if you had any to spare, cakes could be enriched that way. However, it is the sweetness that becomes more and more associated with cake. Sugar became more available during the Crusades but it was fantastically expensive. To make something very sweet showed that you had money. I think that’s why we have such a rich cake heritage here in Britain because people sweetened things as much as they could in their locality. We have lots of examples of cakes that are sweetened with dried fruit etc. When did cake become the recognisable sweet food that we know today? There wasn’t a huge amount of change until a whole lot of things came together in the 18th Century. There was an improvement in milling technology, when flour got more refined. People then further realised the leavening power of eggs. Before then, when a cake was heavy and contained so much dense fruit, you could beat the which then meant they could bake. This all came together at the same time along with the increase in sugar in the 18th Century. It needed all of those things to create what we think of as a cake. Clearly, there was a different cake tradition before that but in the 18th Century it becomes this lighter, whiter, more refined thing that we think of today. The 18th Century was also a time when social events were created where cake was eaten. This includes the introduction of tea, domestic tea parties and the showing off of consumption and all the objects that make teatime such an event. Cake was one part of that where some people had time for leisure and spent it on fripperies. What impact did the rise in sugar consumption have on cakes? eggs for as long as you wanted and it still wasn’t going to rise very much. The combination of moving away from those heavy cakes and having lighter flour meant that eggs could puff up more. The development of oven technology meant that more people could have ovens in their homes, The history of cake as we know it parallels the history of sugar. When it was very expensive to refine sugar, it was still very dark. You would have to buy it in a big cone, break the bits off that you wanted and powder it yourself. As it became more refined and whiter, that whiteness and purity started to be something to be looked out for. Cake paralleled it, partly because the sugar was more refined and partly because the flour was better milled as well. As sugar gets more refined, it gets projected onto cake as something that can also 5x © Alamy German children expectantly await the arrival of a birthday cake on the family table The Industrial Revolution enabled cakes to be bought pre-made for the first time, and inadvertently led an advertising boom as well 42 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 42 20/11/2019 17:33 A Delicious History of Cake Discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, in August 1984, the remains of what became known as the “Lindow Man” is a remarkable, if gruesome, insight into Ancient British life. Dating to somewhere between 2 BCE and 119 CE, the man stood between 1.681.73 meters tall and probably died in his midtwenties when he was horrifically murdered. His body still retains a trimmed beard, moustache and sideburns of brown hair, and he was so well-preserved that even his stomach and intestines could be analysed. Researchers found that one of the last things he ate was perhaps a cake-like food. Based on the remnants of ancient grains in his stomach, Levene explains what might have been discovered: “The ‘cake’ was probably a flat mass that might have been moistened and heated on a hot stone. It probably had enough integrity that it could be turned, and quite a lot of early recipes for what you would call ‘cake’ say that you should turn it over. This isn’t how you’d bake a modern cake, so it was probably more like a pancake that you could flip.” The reasons for Lindow Man eating this cooked item could have been an ancient equivalent of palatable ‘fast food’. “It was likely a way of making grains more nourishing,” says Levene. ”Bread would need refining and a lot more processing but this was more basically ground and cooked on minimal equipment, because you could heat the stones in the fire or cook it in the ashes.” The Lindow Man is on permanent display in the British Museum. Officially known as “Lindow II” he is sometimes jokingly called “Pete Marsh” © Getty Images The young male who became Ancient Britain’s most famous “bog body” may have eaten a form of cake with his last meal Manufacturing and baking bread from an Ancient Egyptian painted frieze. Bread was the first step for civilisations to start making cakes Sugar-making at the Counterslip Refinery in Bristol, November 1873. The history of cake is intertwined with the history of sugar The idea of women being master domestic bakers in Britain possibly stretches back to at least medieval times be more refined, so I think that they do go hand in hand. What are the origins of celebration cakes for birthdays and weddings? They’re quite different stories. Wedding cakes go back much further and first appeared as a “Great Cake” that might be made for a celebration like a wedding or christening. Assuming they were made in a courtly setting or big house, they would be massive. They might be made with 25 eggs, huge amounts of beating and then you’d need a big oven to bake it. That’s where the fruited wedding cake comes from but it’s probably not tall until much later. Birthday cakes seem to come later, in Britain at least. There are ideas that in the Classical world they put candles on cakes, although that might have been as offerings to the gods rather than birthdays. There are then German traditions about cakes made for children and candles being symbolic for something to blow on. They would light it so that the smoke would take evil spirits away from the child. The 18th Century is again a period where there are many ideas about childhood. Part of that was expressing different emotional investments in a child, which then snowballed in the 19th Century. This was when people had more leisure and money to spend on children. Birthday cakes started to emerge as something to specifically make for children, particularly because people were more precise about marking birthdays. However, you don’t see recipes for birthday cakes until the 20th Century. Before that, cakes for children were plain and more in keeping about ideas for their diets. How has the process of baking cakes changed across history? Before the era of electricity and food mixers, the oven was key — particularly when you were able to have one of your own. On the other hand, they were very idiosyncratic so people would need to know their own oven. All you could do was bank up the temperature and then gauge it by putting your hand or a piece of paper in. It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that you started to get regulated, thermostatic controls. The other important things I noticed from old recipe books were simple items like whisks. They came in surprisingly late because in the early 18th 43 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 43 20/11/2019 17:33 Although Alfred the Great was a pivotal figure in early English history, he’s still best remembered for his poor baking skills. “King Alfred and the Cakes” is one of the most famous stories in English history and has been read to children for centuries. In late 878, the Vikings attacked Alfred’s base and he was forced to flee with a small company into the Somerset Levels. This was the lowest point of his reign and reputedly the origin of the cakes story. According to the legend, the king took shelter in the hut of a poor herdsman. Believing him to be a poor soldier, the herdsman’s wife asked him to turn some “cakes” she had set to bake upon a hearth while she collected firewood. Distracted by his own troubles, Alfred forgot his task and was variously described as falling asleep by the fire or mending his weapons. When the herdsman’s wife returned, the cakes were burning and she scolded the king for his negligence. This story is often interpreted as a symbolic tale of how Alfred the king was humble enough to have Mr Schur, chief confectioner at McVitie and Price, finishes off the wedding cake of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The cake is ninefeet high the common touch with his subjects. As for the historicity of the tale and the type of burned cakes in particular, Levene says, “The truth is we will never know. It’s entirely unlikely, given the social status of the place where he supposedly took refuge, that the cake was anything fancy at all. It’s much more likely that it was bread. This bread would be the same definition of ‘cake’ as a ‘cake of soap’, in that it describes the shape and integrity of the product rather than it being sweet.” The categorisation of the cake also had a bearing on the meaning of the story, “The earlier legend seems to have him burning the bread and it later became cake,” says Levene. “I’ve speculated that’s because by the time these legends were being revised, cake meant something else. To later readers, cake was something that suggested that he was a warrior king but spending his time watching something that was not befitting to his status. The story says more about Alfred than the reality of what was then being cooked.” Alfred the Great’s real achievements are often overshadowed by this one apocryphal story. As Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten” Century twigs were still being recommended for beating. There were theories about the fork not being popular for a long time, which would’ve been another way to beat, so that was surprising. How could baking cakes define gender roles in Britain and France? In France, food books were written for professional men whereas in Britain it was always more of a domestic thing for women. In French manuals it was the men who made fancy patisserie objects, which were about show. Even in France today, you are far more likely to go to a patisserie and buy something that looks beautiful than things that are homemade and a bit rustic, which is the British tradition. In terms of the gender stereotypes of the past, this differentiation is so much to do with identities and things that were projected onto women and men. Men had the “skill” and did the outward display while women kept the home together and did all the domestic stuff. However, in Britain at least, women could be a bit more high-profile. They went into businesses at a time when opportunities for women were relatively limited. Baking cakes or making sweets was something that women did do because it was part of their traditional skills and so it was deemed to be appropriate. How did the Industrial Revolution influence the manufacture of baked goods? © Getty Images © Alamy Alysa Levene debunks the myths surrounding the Anglo-Saxon king’s legendary but ill-fated encounter with cakes In the 19th Century people start to mass produce all sorts of sugary conveniences. Advertising and the food markets become more integrated so it was an important period. It was also when cast iron ovens became more popular for manufacturing. You could now buy pre-made cakes and people did because cake doesn’t need to be very fancy. It can be something that you just have with a cup of tea, especially for teatime or an early supper meal. Things like custard powder and jam meant that even poorer people had sugar in their diets and became habituated to sweetness. In some ways that was good because the diet was becoming more democratised but, of course, it’s also a sad story because it meant that people were now more reliant on empty calories. What are the origins of the Victoria sandwich cake? It has its origins in “pound cake”, which had all of its ingredients matched in weight. There 44 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 44 20/11/2019 17:33 In France, it was traditional practice for centuries for professional patissiers to be men are similar cakes with different names in a lot of European countries that had equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. Therefore, it wasn’t made for Queen Victoria but was simply a cake that was around at the time. However, she apparently liked it and served it at Osborne House, so that’s why it was informally named for her. Today, it sums up so many aspects of Britishness in particular. Even if it’s tongue-in-cheek, it’s a symbol of refinement and leisure and you get it at all kinds of nostalgic events like village fairs. What impact did rationing have on cake in Britain during WWII? It was massive because all of the ingredients, apart from flour, were rationed, as well as bought cakes. If you wanted to make a cake you had to save Signalman Andrew Campbell of the Royal Navy watches as his mother slices a cake she made for his 21st birthday, May 1945 your rations. When the butter ration was split between butter and margarine, people would save the butter for eating and the margarine went into cakes. People did what they could and there were many substitute recipes. For example, government leaflets and recipe collections often talked about cakes that used mock cream. However, you couldn’t use sugar for anything as frivolous as icing on a cake because it was needed for much more important things. It’s interesting that sugar was diverted into jam making because although it’s sweet itself, it was helpful in preserving fruits. On the other hand, even with all the government propaganda and rationing leaflets, people still talked about cake. It seems to have been held up as an example of something that was important for people to still have access to. It was recognised as a relatively small and inexpensive comfort at a time of extreme danger, loss and worry. There are leaflets that talk about Christmas cake and children’s birthday cakes. They talked about sweets as well but cakes had so much nostalgia tied up in them and symbolised points when families were together. They were often 2x © Alamy A Delicious History of Cake made and sent to the front as well and soldiers wrote letters about cakes. It seemed to take on more significance even though it was curtailed. Finally, do you think that cake has been a positive force for happiness throughout human history? I think it has because it draws people together. Cakes are simple and nonthreatening, although they are vilified more often now because they’re not good for us. However, there always seems to be space for “Go on, treat yourself” and “Everything is alright in moderation.” This is likely because you are probably doing something else when you eat cake, such as socialising or relaxing. Interestingly, people have correlated periods of economic downturn with people baking more. It’s something that gives a bit of comfort in the home and re-imposes normality. Conversely, when there’s an economic upswing people spend their money on really fancy, expensive, fashionable cakes. Even though it seems ridiculous and such a huge claim for such a ridiculous foodstuff, it really does seem to bind people closer together in those ways. 45 AAH85.feat_cake.indd 45 20/11/2019 17:33