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Shakespeare & Beyond

Seed cake inspired by Thomas Tusser

seed cake
seed cake
seed cake

Photo by Teresa Wood

As our First Chefs recipe series continues, Marissa Nicosia writes about a 17th-century recipe for seed cake inspired by the farmer poet Thomas Tusser. Nicosia is the author of the blog Cooking in the Archives: Updating Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen, where you can find even more information about these adaptations.


In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the uptight steward Malvolio breaks up Uncle Toby Belch’s midnight revelry and Toby protests with the question, “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” or, in other words, do you think you can really put a stop to all celebratory eating and drinking? (II.iii113). The answer is clearly no. As Julia Reinhard Lupton writes in an essay on Shakespeare and dessert: “To eat cake is to refuse to live by bread alone” (223). Cake was not an everyday food in early modern Britain, and it probably isn’t (or shouldn’t be) for us. Cakes were reserved for celebrations, large or small.

Comments

I like the idea of recipes written in blank verse!

NIELS E NIELSEN — March 12, 2019