Cakes are essentially forms of refined, intensified, sweetened,
flavoured, and ornamented bread. They are baked for the
joyful occasion, the social gathering, the feast. In their
history is summed up an amount of ingenuity, the mere
tracing of which affords to the philosophical inquirer after
tha development of human affairs the greatest intellectual
pleasure. From the Catonian placenta down to the modern
brioche, cakes signalize an evolution of culture, and, like
confectionery, or including it, are a measure of culture.
Their variety is as great as it is pleasing, and any attempt
at the production of novelty has, in our opinion, very small
chance of success, particularly after the acknowledgment
of Careme that he had failed in it. The duty of the present
generation and of their descendants with regard to cakes is
probably exclusively one of conservancy, namely, to main-
tain the characteristic inventions in their purity, and not to
allow them to be deteriorated or lost by equivocal changes
or additions. Most cultured nations possess cakes which are
peculiar to them, and all such cakes have certain funda-
mental aualogies with each other, without being derivable
from each other. This will be seen by a comparison of
brioche, baba, ratan cake. Savoy cake, and Bath buns. The
introduction of fruit gives rise to highly-tasty products and
innumerable variations, and thus, with spices, a cake
becomes a miniature abstract of some of the finest products
of the earth.
In French a cake is called ydteato, and is defined as a kind
of pastry, mostly round in shape, and made of flour, eggs,
and butter. Dumas supposes the name to be derived from
396
THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY
the prodigality with which children are spoiled {(jdlcs) by
the indiscriminate distribution of cakes as rewards or
gastronomic encouragements. We believe this surmise to bo
a mere pleasantry. The most renowned of cakes in France
is the GcUeau des Hois, or Cake of ike Three Kings, in which
a beau is concealed. On the day of Epiphany friends and
lamilies assemble to draw the kings — that is to say, to draw
a piece of a cake divided into as many pieces as persons are
present, and he who gets the concealed bean is deemed par-
ticularly lucky for all futurity. In certain parts the cake
is cut into so many pieces that there is a piece in excess of
the number of drawers. This is called the part dti bon Dieu,
and is given to the first poor mendicant or wayfarer.
The name of the remarkable cake called .fir/oc/ic is alleged
by Dumas to be derived from the fromage de Brie, which
he states had formerly entered upon its composition. But
there is not the slightest proof for this surmise ; on the
contrary, from the comparison of analogous pastries, and
the actual character of the thing itself, we believe that no
cheese of any kind was ever used in the composition of the
brioche proper, and that its name, like many other names
of original invention, is shrouded in mystery. This conclu-
sion is not weakened, but confirmed, by the fact that at the
beginning of the century a French culinary faddist mixed
cheese, not of Brie, but of Gruyere, with brioche paste, and
termed the ultimate product brioche an fromage. In Dumas’s
Dictionary the brioche receives certain adjectives, which we
have not seen in any noted work on French pastry, such as
fine and royale, also mousseline.
Page 250
Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
Cakes are essentially forms of refined, intensified, sweetened, flavoured, and ornamented bread. They are baked for the joyful occasion, the social gathering, the feast. In their history is summed up an amount of ingenuity, the mere tracing of which affords to the philosophical inquirer after the development of human affairs the greatest intellectual pleasure. From the Catonian placenta down to the modern brioche, cakes signalize an evolution of culture, and, like confectionery, or including it, are a measure of culture. Their variety is as great as it is pleasing, and any attempt at the production of novelty has, in our opinion, very small chance of success, particularly after the acknowledgment of Careme that he had failed in it. The duty of the present generation and of their descendants with regard to cakes is probably exclusively one of conservancy, namely, to maintain the characteristic inventions in their purity, and not to allow them to be deteriorated or lost by equivocal changes or additions. Most cultured nations possess cakes which are peculiar to them, and all such cakes have certain fundamental analogies with each other, without being derivable from each other. This will be seen by a comparison of brioche, baba, ratan cake, Savoy cake, and Bath buns. The introduction of fruit gives rise to highly-tasty products and innumerable variations, and thus, with spices, a cake becomes a miniature abstract of some of the finest products of the earth.
In French a cake is called gâteau, and is defined as a kind of pastry, mostly round in shape, and made of flour, eggs, and butter. Dumas supposes the name to be derived from
the prodigality with which children are spoiled (gâteaux) by the indiscriminate distribution of cakes as rewards or gastronomic encouragements. We believe this surmise to be a mere pleasantry. The most renowned of cakes in France is the Gâteau des Rois, or Cake of the Three Kings, in which a beau is concealed. On the day of Epiphany friends and families assemble to draw the kings — that is to say, to draw a piece of a cake divided into as many pieces as persons are present, and he who gets the concealed bean is deemed particularly lucky for all futurity. In certain parts the cake is cut into so many pieces that there is a piece in excess of the number of drawers. This is called the part dti bon Dieu, and is given to the first poor mendicant or wayfarer.
The name of the remarkable cake called brioche is alleged by Dumas to be derived from the fromage de Brie, which he states had formerly entered upon its composition. But there is not the slightest proof for this surmise ; on the contrary, from the comparison of analogous pastries, and the actual character of the thing itself, we believe that no cheese of any kind was ever used in the composition of the brioche proper, and that its name, like many other names of original invention, is shrouded in mystery. This conclusion is not weakened, but confirmed, by the fact that at the beginning of the century a French culinary faddist mixed cheese, not of Brie, but of Gruyere, with brioche paste, and termed the ultimate product brioche an fromage. In Dumas’s Dictionary the brioche receives certain adjectives, which we have not seen in any noted work on French pastry, such as fine and royale, also mousseline.