Simnel Cake: Lenten Treat of the Ages.

A staple of Passion Week, as far back as Medieval times, are simnel cakes. Given their wide popularity it is surprising that no one is at all sure of what they consisted. Simnel flour (simnellus or sumnellos) was the finest milled grade of white flour.[1] For this reason, some conjecture that the cake was made by much the same method as simnel bread.

Most commentators are quite confident that saffron was a major ingredient — providing a uniquely sweet yellow-colored crust into which were placed raisins and plums. Saffron-raisin cakes were a favorite throughout the year during Tudor times to eat with ale or beer. The raisins, therefore, may be apocryphal or only to be expected. Plums are mentioned in all later recipes and seem likely to be a survival from the original recipes.

Robert Herrick informs us, shortly after Elizabethan times, that simnel cakes were the customary gift for Mothering Day, as well.

TO DIANEME. A Ceremonie in Glocester.

 

I'le to thee a Simnell bring,

'Gainst thou go'st a mothering;

So that, when she blesseth thee,

Half that blessing thou'lt give me.

Mothering Day is another name for mid-Lent Sunday — a traditional day for a daughter to pay her mother a holiday visit intended to break the Lenten gloom with company and creative foods appropriate to the fast of the season.

Samuel Pegge sees confirmation that saffron was used in the crusts of simnel cakes in Shakespeare's ‘Winter's Tale; where the Clown (Act iv.) says, "Then I must have Saffron to colour the Warden Pyes.”’ At the very least, it adds to the positive evidence.

Another work describes the simnel as it existed in 1714. The poem Veillée a la Campagne: Or the Simnel. A Tale[2] is hardly Shakespeare. In fact, it is unlikely that we would pay the least attention to it if it did not describe a simnel cake of the time.

The cake was serenaded into the manor hall like the old boar’s head for the medieval Christmas feast. 

The fiddlers at my lady’s Call

Play’d up the Simnel thro’ the hall

When thus Sir John: Friends, mark this Cake

smooth-shining, of Celestial Make,

Orbicular; that scorns to yield

In circuit to a Grecian shield:

It is difficult to believe that the traditional simnel cake at that time was “orbicular”. The reference to the shield suggests that the word might be intended to convey convexity. Several lines down it is said to have an “edge”. The author is intent upon laughs rather than precision.

Still, he describes its “Heart-cheering Crust”. Later he writes “A glossy Spheroid flat and round.” Dame Eleanor is baking a cake. Her recipe includes fresh eggs, “Cream stir’d in,” plums and saffron “to her Taste” and flour to “complete the stiftning Paste”.  She rejects the advice of Simon her husband to “boyl it” with disdain. The two have a physically vigorous falling out during which the cake inadvertently ends up on the boil and a new approach to cake making is born. The cake gets their nicknames “Sim” and “Nell”: SimNel cake. It’s an old wives’ tale from at least the early 17^th century.

By the time of Chamber’s Book of Days (1888), the common make-up of the cake could be described as

raised cakes, the crust of which is made of fine flour and water, with sufficient saffron to give it a deep yellow colour, and the interior is filled with the materials of a very rich plum-cake, with plenty of candied lemon peel, and other good things.

Chamber’s description of the preparation of Simnel cakes is particularly interesting.

They are made up very stiff, tied up in a cloth, and boiled for several hours, after which they are brushed over with egg, and then baked. When ready for sale the crust is as hard as if made of wood.

More interesting even than it might seem by virtue of Andrew Willets' obscure study of the books of Genesis and Exodus mentioned simnel in conjunction with the directions Moses gave for the preparation of manna. Some was to be baked and some to be “seethed” in order to preserve it for later baking. It is possible that this was the inspiration for simnel as an Easter specialty centuries before any record preserves it.

If simnel bread (and simnel cake crust) was meant to represent manna it was fully appropriated in many instances by pressing a cross into the crust.

Mrs. Gaskell had her own ideas on the origin of the name.

Then on Mid-Lent Sunday, instead of furmenty 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.[3] 

She wasn’t the first to think of it nor was she the last. The one thing we can say with absolute certainty about Simnel Cake is that musing upon its mysteries is too much fun to resist.

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[1] Pegge, Samuel. Curialia Miscellanea or anecdotes of old times (1818), 424.

[2] Anonymous. Veillée a la Campagne: Or the Simnel. A Tale (1714). 7-16.

[3] Elizabeth Gaskell to Mary Howitt, August 18, 1838.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Sir Henry Bedingfeld’s Notes Regarding Princess Elizabeth in The Tower. February 7, 2021. “Itm, hir grace to have lib'tee to walke in the Gardeyn when so ever she doth comaunde, forenoone and afternoone,…”
• Gutenberg, proto-Hack Writers and Shakespeare. May 26, 2020. “A less well known effect of the Reformation was that many young Catholic men who had taken religious orders in order to receive an education began to lead lives at large from monastic discipline.  Like Erasmus and Rabelais they took up the pen.”
• Gossip as History: The Murder of Amy Robsart. February 17, 2020. "The first sudden death Leicester was rumored to have caused was that of his wife, Amy Robsart, in 1560. In that year, it was still not clear whether the Queen would marry. But certainly not her beloved Leicester if he were married."
• Gossip as History: Anne Boleyn, Part 1.  November 8, 2019. “This is more than just gossip, I submit.  It is a vital part of the historical record.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.