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For
You, My Sweet
From
oysters and lamb testicles to cream puffs and spun sugar,
the evolution of cakes as a symbol of wedded bliss
By
Amy Halloran
The typical wedding-cake tower echoes the long white flow
of a wedding gown. For me, it evokes a train of thought attached
to the whole cloth of weddings, including Cinderella-style
courtships, a trip to the altar, and two words that glue you
to a new life.
But what is the tradition of the traditional wedding cake?
How did the layers get stacked? What does it mean when a bride
and groom smoosh cake in each other’s faces? And do white
towers of sugar and fat mean anything to marriage ceremonies
in other cultures?
Most sources attribute the Romans with giving us the first
wedding cake, which was not a cake as we know it, but rather,
bread made from wheat or barley. The groom broke this round
over the head of the bride, which was meant to somehow ensure
fertility, especially if the newlyweds shared the crumbs.
Medieval England featured a habit of stacking a tower of small,
spiced buns as high as possible. The challenge was for the
couple to kiss over the tower without toppling it. Kissing
while keeping the buns in place guaranteed a prosperous future
for the couple, and this was when marriage was for money,
remember, not love. Fishermen wed fishwives, and rich cousins
married each other to consolidate property and power.
Supposedly, a French chef who was visiting England in the
1600s thought to improve this custom by stacking tiers of
cakes. But at this time, the wedding cake was not the major
wedding-food centerpiece that it is today. English recipes
for “bride’s pye” called for outrageous groupings of aphrodisiac
foods tucked between two crusts: oysters, lamb testicles,
and cockscombs. Bride’s pye continued on through time; a recipe
for one featuring a hen full of eggs plus minced meats and
fruits is in a Yorkshire cookbook from the 19th century.
Originally, brides cut the cake alone, but as wedding cakes
evolved, so did icing. Icings initially were baked onto the
already baked cakes, and the name for icing refers to the
shiny hardness of the stuff—the iciness, if you will. Iced
cakes were so hard that brides needed help cutting them, and
so the bride and groom cutting it together became a symbol
of the joint effort of marriage.
As far as a white cake and frosting symbolizing virginity,
well, that idea became attached to the cake in Victorian times.
Prior to that, the whiteness was emblematic of another status:
money. Whiter sugar was more processed, and cost much more
than browner products. Whiter frosting implied affluence,
not purity.
It was also in the late 1800s that wedding cakes were made
edible on all levels; all but the bottom level of the tower
was often spun sugar. Improvements in ingredients, including
baking powders, sodas, and sugar, and improvements in kitchen
tools, such as cake pans and more evenly heated ovens, made
the baking of multiple layers of cake practical. Stacking
systems grew up, too, and Prince Leopold’s 1882 wedding cake
was the first famous cake whose upper layers were not just
decorated sugar rounds.
Feeding each other cake is a Kodak moment of great intimacy
in public. Many couples break the pressure of that minute
by smashing cake into each other’s mouths. Sharing cake is
supposed to indicate the way the couple will nourish each
other in their married life, and some link this breaking of
a bread-like product to Christian practices of communion.
The wedding cake is a Western phenomenon that is migrating
a bit into other cultures. Traditional Chinese wedding cakes
are presented to the bride’s family as part of the wedding
proposal, and these “happiness cakes,” or “dragon and phoenix”
cakes, are filled with bean pastes and sent to guests with
wedding invitations. Now these cakes, and of course our ubiquitous
white tower, are showing up at Chinese weddings.
French customs for sweets at a wedding include croque-en-broche,
a cone of cream puffs standing on a nougat base and wrapped
in a lace of caramel. I read about one overdone example of
this that had wedding guests protecting themselves from chunks
of burnt spun sugar with napkins as the chef tried to dismantle
his creation with a saucepan.
Although it is superstitiously unwise for a bride to bake
her own cake, there are no rules regarding a groom baking
one, and with costs starting at $2-3 slice and climbing beyond
$20 a serving, you may want to hit the kitchen.
Still, wedding cakes are so crafty and artisanal these days,
why not go all out? Bakers are modeling churchyards, getaway
cars, and wedding beds. They’re stacking cakes of suitcases
and hatboxes. Frostings are going dark chocolate and deep
reds. And if any cake is one you can have and eat, too, the
wedding cake is. Keep a piece in your freezer, or, as my husband’s
grandparents did, can it in brandy, and you can taste some
on your 50th anniversary.
2008
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