 A freshly baked Eccles cake | |
| Alternative names | Squashed Fly Cake, Fly Cake, Fly Pie |
|---|---|
| Type | Cake |
| Place of origin | England |
| Region or state | Eccles, Greater Manchester |
| Main ingredients | Flaky pastry, butter, currants |
An Eccles cake is a small, round pie, similar to a turnover, filled with currants and made from flaky pastry with butter, sometimes topped with brown sugar.
The Eccles cake is named after the English town of Eccles, which is in the historic county of Lancashire and in the ceremonial county of Greater Manchester. Eccles cakes are a Lancashire food tradition, with similar cakes being found in other parts of the County of Lancashire, and are traditionally eaten with Lancashire cheese.[ citation needed ]
It is not known who invented the recipe, [1] but James Birch is credited with being the first person to sell Eccles cakes commercially; he sold the cakes from his shop, at the corner of Vicarage Road and St Mary's Road, now Church Street, in the town centre, in 1793. [2] John Ayto states that Elizabeth Raffald was possibly the person who invented the Eccles Cake. [3]
The word cake is used in the older general sense of a "portion of bread containing additional ingredients" rather than the narrower meaning of sweet, leavened baked good. [4]
Eccles cakes do not have Protected Geographical Status, so may be manufactured anywhere and still labelled as "Eccles" cakes. [5]
The Chorley cake from Chorley is often seen as the most similar variant of the Eccles cake, however it is flatter, made with shortcrust pastry rather than flaky pastry, and has no sugar topping. [6]
The Blackburn cake is named after the town of Blackburn and is made with stewed apples in place of currants. [7]
In East Lancashire, a cake known as a "sad cake", can be found in the Darwen, Blackburn, Accrington, Burnley, Colne, Nelson, Padiham areas and throughout the Rossendale area. Similar to the Chorley cake, the sad cake is often up to 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter, and is rolled thinner so that some of the currants show through the pastry.
The Banbury cake is an oval cake from Banbury, Oxfordshire, similarly filled with currants, but with added spices. [8]
The currants roll [9] in the Commonwealth Caribbean is a descendant of the Eccles cake. It is made into the shape of a roll similar to that of rugelach with currants wrapped and rolled between flaky pastry layers. [10] [11] [12] A variation to the currants roll is the coconut roll (known in Guyana as salara [13] and in Grenada as turnovers [14] ) where the currants are replaced by various colours of shredded coconut.
Australian company Arnotts baked a "Spicy Fruit Roll" loosely based on the Eccles cake.
Pastry refers to a variety of doughs, as well as the sweet and savoury baked goods made from them. These goods are often called pastries as a synecdoche, and the dough may be accordingly called pastry dough for clarity. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, fruit preserves, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spain, other Southern European countries, North African countries, Latin American countries, and the Philippines. The name comes from the Spanish empanar, and translates as 'breaded', that is, wrapped or coated in bread. They are made by folding dough over a filling, which may consist of meat, cheese, tomato, corn, or other ingredients, and then cooking the resulting turnover, either by baking or frying.
Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually served chilled.
Kuih are bite-sized snack or dessert foods commonly found in Southeast Asia and China. It is a fairly broad term which may include items that would be called cakes, cookies, dumplings, pudding, biscuits, or pastries in English and are usually made from rice or glutinous rice. In China, where the term originates from, kueh or koé (粿) in the Min Nan languages refers to snacks which are typically made from rice but can occasionally be made from other grains such as wheat. The term kuih is widely used in Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, kueh is used in Singapore and Indonesia, kue is used in Indonesia only, all three refer to sweet or savoury desserts.
Chorley cakes are flattened, fruit filled pastry cakes, traditionally associated with the town of Chorley in Lancashire, England.
Kue are bite-sized snacks or desserts originally from what is now Indonesia but have since spread throughout Southeast Asia. Kue is a fairly broad term in Indonesian to describe a wide variety of snacks including cakes, cookies, fritters, pies, scones, and patisserie. Kue are made from a variety of ingredients in various forms; some are steamed, fried or baked. They are popular snacks in Indonesia, which has the largest variety of kue. Because of the countries' historical colonial ties, Koeé (kue) is also popular in the Netherlands.
A Banbury cake is a spiced, oval-shaped, currant-filled pastry. Since the mid-19th century, Banbury cakes have grown increasingly similar to Eccles cakes; but the earlier versions were quite different from the modern pastry. Besides currants, the filling typically includes mixed peel, brown sugar, rum, and nutmeg. Banbury cakes are traditionally enjoyed with afternoon tea.
There are many geographically indicated foods of the United Kingdom. In British cuisine, there is a custom of naming foodstuffs with reference to their place of origin. However, there are other reasons for this practice; Scotch egg, which was invented in London and Dover sole which indicates where they were landed, for example.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the British poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by British food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Cumberland rum nicky is a sweet shortcrust pastry tart or pie, commonly filled with dates and stem ginger, flavoured with rum, and sweetened with brown sugar. Rum nickies are associated with the historic county of Cumberland in northwest England, and the ingredients used in their manufacture reflect the county's former significance as a major import and trading centre for products of the UK's Caribbean colonies. As with many traditional foodstuffs, the precise list of ingredients can vary between different cooks and recipes, with currants and cinnamon being common additions or substitutions.
