LONG AGO STORIES

Taranaki Daily News, 11 May 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

LONG AGO STORIES

WALTER MAKES SIMNEL CAKES. Walter was a pastry cook’s boy, who lived in Lancashire, the home of the Simnel cake, about the yea r 1861. His grandfather told him that for as long as he could remember thousands of people had flocked into Lancashire on the fourth Sunday in Lent to eat Simnel cakes, and Walter once asked him the reason of this. “Well, sori, opinions differ,” replied the old man. “The word simnel seems to mean corn, and some folk think we eat Simnel cakes in memory of Ceres, the old heathen goddess of com. But we in Lancashire eat Simnel cakes in MidLent in memory of the fine banquet given by Joseph to his brothers when they visited him in Egypt.” “But why do some folk call Simnel Sunday ‘Mothering Sunday’?” asked Walter.

“That’s another Story,” said the old man. “You see, in old times the Church was the mother of us all, taking the place of that Ceres of the heathen, and in Mid-Lent children gave presents of cakes to their parents, end the whole family went to Church together, and ate the cakes afterwards in joyful company.” When Walter was making the rich cakes, which were first boiled, then pressed into tins, baked, and finished off with almond paste, ha. asked his master the origin of the custom. “Long ago, on Mothering Sunday,” said the jolly pastry cook, “an old man called Simon and his old wife Nell expected their grandchildren to come and see them. Nell said she would make a cake, but Simon wanted a pudding, so they quarrelled. But they had to make it up because the children were coming,

so Nell said she’d boil the cake first and bake it afterwards, and they were both pleased. Everybody liked this cake, which was called Sirii-Nell after . them both. Pastry cooks made Mid-Lent cakes like that ever afterwards, instead qf the dry flour and salt cakes of ancient days.” When Simnel Sunday came rourid, Walter was up and out betimes, but it seemed to him that the crowd was not po dense or so noisy as usual. Many of the shops were shut, too, -and there was a preacher going round saying that the public houses ought to be closed. “It’s the trains that have done , all this," said Walter’s grandfather. “Taking our cakes to other towns so that people have no need to come here and eat ’em.” That gave Walter a shock. .He made Simnel cakes better than he did anything else, So he decided to leave Lancashire and make cakes in London before anybody else thought of doing it. He sodn had a nice little shop of his own, and to-day you can buy Simnel cakes almost everywhere, but hardly anybody remembers yjhy they are made or why they are eaten.