The Twelve Cakes of Christmas

Many popular recipes come from lineages that can be traced back for decades, even centuries. For at least 2,000 years, festive cakes have been made in December, and, using archaeological evidence and ancient books, The Twelve Cakes of Christmas defines the key ingredients of the cakes that would eventually be served on Twelfth Night at the end of the Christmas season. From 17th-century English cookbooks, the book identifies recipes that would have been made as twelfth cakes, full of expensive ingredients, such as raisins, almonds, sweet wine, and candied peel, but made like fruit-breads, with yeast. In the 18th century, a revolution in mixing occurred. Ingredient proportions followed the new pound cake principle, and, for the first time, butter and sugar were creamed together. The Victorian age saw Twelfth Night customs give way to those associated with Christmas Day. In the colonies, growing demand for rich Christmas cakes resulted in the renaming of a range of recipes. Plum cakes, ri