Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Twelfth-Cake
…was served on Twelfth Night (Feast of the Epiphany), January 6. The following annotations relating to Twelfth-cake and some related Epiphany traditions (slightly edited/abridged here) were noted for the entry of January 6, 1659/60:
Warren Keith Wright on Mon 6 Jan 2003, 11:18 pm | Link
QUEEN and KING: January 5th was Twelfth Night (whence the title of Shakespeare
Just as an aside. I have now made a currant cake such as Pepys would have eaten (see http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1661/01/07/index.php#c12597) as I have that same Pepys at Table book. It tastes alarmingly similar to the Venison Pasty! Same spices etc. It is much *much* sweeter though.
cake
(Originally posted as annotation to 14 May 1662.)
From Robert May’s “The Accomplisht Cook”, 1660 (as it appears in “Pepys at Table” by Driver and Berriedale-Johson).
HOW TO MAKE AN EXTRAORDINARY GOOD CAKE
“Take half a bushel of the best flour you can get, very finely searced, and lay it on a large pastry board, make a hole in the middle thereof, put to it three pounds of the best butter you can get; with 14 pounds of currants finely picked and rubber, three quarts of good new thick cream, warmed, 2 pounds of fine sugar beaten, 3 pints of new ale barm or yeast, 4 ounces of cinnamon beaten fine and searsed, also an ounce of beaten ginger, 2 ounces of nutmegs beaten fine and searsed, put in all these materials together, and work them into indifferent stiff paste, keep it warmed till the oven be hot, them make it up and bake it, being baked an hour and a half ice it, then take four pounds of double refined sugar, beat it and searce it and put it in a cleaned scowered skillet the quantity of a gallon, and boil it to a candy height with a little rosewater, then draw the cake, run it all over and set it in the oven till it be candied”.
“To make a Cake the way of the Royal Princess, the Lady Elizabeth, daughter to King CHARLES the first. ….” (for full text press ‘transcript’ button, link page right)
The Queens Closet Opened,[London]: Printed by J.W. for Nath. Brooke, 1668
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/booksforcooks/1600s/princehome/princess.html