[PW] matrimonial.cake

[Daphne Drewello]

Jim wrote

> In the Western Provinces of Canada, date squares, prepared with an
> oat-meal
> cake mixture and a date filling are referred to as Matrimonial Cake. A
> friend
> has asked for the origin of the term,

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2006-06-13/limage5.php

In the county of Yorkshire, bride pie was the most important dish at
weddings, as it was considered essential to the couple's future happiness.
It consisted of a large round pie containing a plump hen full of eggs,
surrounded by minced meats, fruits and nuts and embellished with ornate
pastry emblems. Each guest had to eat a small piece of the pie; not to do so
was considered extremely rude and impolite. A ring was traditionally placed
in the pie, and the lady who found it would be the next to marry. Bride pie
was still being served at weddings in some parts of England as late as the
19th century.

In the 17th century, bride pie developed into bride cake, the predecessor of
the modern wedding cake. Fruited cakes, as symbols of fertility and
prosperity, gradually became the centerpieces for weddings. A much less
costly bride cake took the simpler form of two large rounds of short-crust
pastry sandwiched together with currants and sprinkled with sugar on the
top. Very few homes at the time could boast of an oven, but this type of
pastry cake could easily be cooked on a bakestone on the hearth.

 Matrimony cake, another Yorkshire specialty, was more like a pie than a
cake, being a pastry case filled with a mixture of dried fruits, apples,
spices and breadcrumbs. It may have descended from the bride pie, with the
omission of the hen, eggs and meat, much as modern fruit mincemeat evolved
from the original mincemeat containing shredded mutton or beef. With its
solid base, smooth filling and rough top, matrimony cake was said to sum up
the complexities of marriage.


    If you enter "matrimony cake" and "Yorkshire" into Google,
the fourth result is a selection from "Green Weddings that Don't Cost the 
Earth"
by Carol Reed-Jones (1996).  It traces the matrimony cake back to 1890.


Daphne Drewello
Alfred Dickey Library
Jamestown, ND