Tina Baxter returns to share the delights of Simnel Cake.  You can join Tina on on her Mother’s Day City Gardens walk at 2.00 pm on 31^st March and mothers go free! Booking details here.

The British are great ones for traditions, and especially food related ones around Easter time.  We have Pancake Day and in the City the Butterworth Charity give out Hot Cross Buns at St Bartholomew the Great on Good Friday. Surprisingly no one has caught on to the delights of Simnel Cake, specially baked over centuries to celebrate mid-Lent Sunday, also known as Laetare or Mothering Sunday.

Elizabeth Gaskell the author explains in a letter to a friend:

“Instead of frumenty (a sort of sweet porridge) we eat Simnel cake: a cake made variously, but always with saffron for its principal ingredient This I should fancy was a relic of Papistry, but I wonder how it originated. Lambert Simnel, the imposter in Henry the Seventh’s time was a baker’s son, I think. The shop windows are filled with them, high and low eat them.”

The Simnel cake has gone through many changes since then and is now mainly eaten over the Easter holidays.  Still a light rich fruit cake, saffron is rarely used incorporates almond paste (marzipan) in the middle, not part of the original recipe.  It is also now baked rather than boiled, then grilled to give a crisp glaze to the top and the 11 marzipan balls (representing the 11 faithful disciples).

There are considerable records which contain the word simnel, perhaps not surprising as it comes from the Latin meaning finely ground wheaten flour, and often refers to a special type of bread. Bread being the food of life. Many ancient records and chronicles mention the ordering of simnel for high days and holidays, including Edward the Confessor when he appeared at Winchester, Worcester or Westminster.  Also William the Conqueror after the founding of Battle Abbey gave a gift to the monks of bread fit for the royal table, which was called Simenel.  By the C13th the word also came to be used to describe a cake.

The history goes on and on, how it became associated with Mothering Sunday is not clear, but there are references about the connection from C17th. Also, it might seem strange to have such a delicious cake during Lent, as cream and butter forbidden. However, eggs were not, and as its principal ingredients were all dried and preserved, and made with unleavened wheat, it was the perfect cake/bread to celebrate the day.

For further reading see History Today ‘The Historian Cookbook’ Simnel Cake’ by Alexander Lee. Copy available at the Guildhall Library.