Читать книгу Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table - Nigel Slater - Страница 13

The Continental cake is slim, shallow, understated. It may be flavoured with almond, pistachio, bitter-orange or rose, and its sugared-almond-coloured box will be tied with a loop of the thinnest pink ribbon, from which it can dangle elegantly from a begloved Parisian hand. English cake is fat, thick and cut in short, stubby wedges; there will be sticky cherries, swirls of buttercream, and sometimes royal icing. What it lacks in elegance it makes up for in enthusiasm.

A French madeleine is a petite almond cake delicately ridged like a miniature scallop shell. An English madeleine is a dumpy castle made out of sponge, doused in raspberry jam and sprinkled with desiccated coconut. It then gets a cherry on top, and if it’s really lucky, wings of livid green angelica. It’s a case of Proust versus Billy Bunter.

British cakes have a certain wobbly charm to them, and what might be missing in terms of finesse is there in lick-your-fingers stickiness. Fruit-laden Genoa, chunky marmalade, Irish seed cake and glorious coffee and walnut are not delicacies you eat politely with a cake fork, they are something you tuck into with the enthusiasm of a labrador at a water bowl.