Читать книгу Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table - Nigel Slater - Страница 35

These islands are rich in local recipes, and you could probably eat a different cake in every town from Land’s End to the Hebrides. Cornwall’s peel-flecked heavy cake would keep you going until you got to feast on Devon’s cream-filled chudleighs, before moving swiftly along through treasures such as Somerset’s crumbly catterns, Dorset apple, and the sultana-spiked Norfolk vinegar cake. On the way you could snatch a Banbury cake, a Chorley cake, one of Yorkshire’s fat rascals or a nice slice of treacly parkin. You might also like to include Richmond maids of honour, Shrewsbury cakes, orange-scented Norfolk sponges and curranty Pembrokeshire buns.

Then there is Pitcaithly bannock (a sort of almond shortbread studded with chopped peel), Westmorland pepper cake with cloves and black treacle, and something called Patagonian black cake, named for the Welsh families who emigrated to work in the South American gold mines. Richmond, Rippon, Selkirk, Nelson, Grantham and Goosenargh all celebrate their existence with something for tea. This is little Britain in a cake tin.

At four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, cake in hand, we can toast almost any county, city or fair we choose. We can say thank you for the harvest or well done to the sheep shearers, we can salute a wedding or wave goodbye after a funeral. There are temptations to raise a glass of Madeira to Shrove Tuesday and First Footing, to Twelfth Night and Hogmanay, to mop fairs and matrimony. On a Sunday we can thank the Lord with a slice of bible cake or scripture cake, godcakes (but naturally, no devil’s food cake) or church window cake, better known as Battenberg. Then there’s sad cake, soul cake, sly cake and shy cake; cakes for spinsters, cakes for the navy, cakes for the Queen. There is almost nothing in this country for which a cake hasn’t been named.