What are 'light cakes', please? I've been searching for them and can only find recipes for sponge cakes which are light in texture (shouldn't sponge cakes be like this as a matter of course?).

And in which book's are they mentioned?

Light cakes are in Gay:



and Excitements:



They also rate a mention in Lost Staircase:



and Janie of La Rochelle:

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I'd always imagined "light cakes" to be small sponge cakes (like fairy cakes or cupcakes), so it comes as a surprise that EBD thought one should butter them. Makes them seem more like teacakes...

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Emma's book blog

I thought light cakes would be a bit like Welsh cakes - they're served hot and buttered...

Could it be these? They come up when one googles "Welsh Light Cakes" and if you scroll down to a lower recipe you will see it's an alternative name. Given the reference to Gwladys and Megan...... Welsh Light Cakes

ETA Aha - two minds with but a single thought

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Ah, I have a bakestone very like the one in that picture - invaluable for making Welsh cakes! Mind, I double up by also using a fantastic cast-iron frying pan I've got which is just as thick and heavy - cuts baking time in half!

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Ahhhhhhhh, yes ... thank you. They are more what I had imagained, rather than sponge-cakes becasue of the 'drippng with butter' thing.

I've been going through the books I have (School At, Jo Of, Head Girl, Rivals, Eustacia, Jo Returns) so far, documenting foods mentioned. The first 3 (that I have) have up to 30 mentions of food per book, then the frequency plummets - Rivals has 5 and Jo Returns has 7. I'll keep going through the whole series and then I'll be in a position to put the recipes into a document with appropriate CS quotes and so on.

I'm skimming through all the books inthe series I have and am table-ing the foods in them. I've come across this in Genius:



The thing is, do you think they would really have had savoury cheesecakes to finish a meal? I wonder if Elinor had heard of 'cheesecakes' but had never come across them and made up the description?

Mary-Lou has 5 of them, for goodness sake! Would anyone ever be able to eat this many of such a rich food at the end of a meal? Or even at the beginning?

They sound exactly like turopita, that you get in Greece - flaky pastry cases with melted cheese inside. Yummy! But that doesn't mean EBD knew what she was talking about, of course!

I would have thought it may have been the reverse - EBD had eaten something similar and gave them the name 'cheesecake'. I would expect them to be fairly small and I think they sound delicious - I could probably eat 5 right now

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Thank you for those ideas. From New: tea with cream? Really? Would you, anyone?
And Mrs Pertwee witters on about 'flawns' and 'cates'. What are these, please? They're kind of foods, but how so?

I believe 'flawns' are more or less the ancestors of our 'flans' - the online version of Webster's gives a definition of 'a sort of flat custard or pie'. 'Cate' I don't know - the OED would have it, if anyone has access handy?

The idea of tea with cream is revolting to me - one does occasionally come across references to it as quite usual in fiction, though usually in rather earlier 20thc novels (in my experience, anyway). Though, given EBD's obsession with cream (whether in coffee, cakes, biscuits, soups or porridge!), I suppose it's possible she does just mean tea with 'rich, creamy milk'...?

I've always wondered about those 'savoury' cheesecakes. I think there are a few possibilities. 'Savoury' can just mean 'tasty' or 'good' (though we tend to get it used more often as a verb in this way, eg 'Mary-Lou savoured her five delicious cheesecakes'), so it's possible that the cheesecakes were sweet cheesecakes, rather than what we might think of as the more usual meaning of savoury as 'not sweet', and all she means is that they were delicious.

Another meaning of 'savoury' is a small course served after the sweet and before the port in a traditional formal meal - welsh rarebit would have been a common choice as a 'savoury' of this kind, so I suppose it's just possible EBD was thinking of non-sweet cheesecakes at the end of the meal in this way? (Pretty unlikely, though, given that we're in continental Europe, where as far as I know this kind of end-of-the-meal 'savoury' dish is a UK phenomenon...? Plus EBD is so obsessed with desserts and sweet things in general that I imagine that if she intended the cheesecakes not to be sweet cakes, she would have had the girls remarking on how strange it was to eat something non-sweet as a final course...?)

The cornflakes with cream in Richenda always revolt me to the highest degree.

Do you think (re: tea with cream) she meant evaporated milk ? It's what I frequently get offered here in Germany. Not that it's remotely palatable....

Ooh cornflakes with cream - yummy!

And I agree about evaporated milk (known in our house as kaffeesahne) in tea but for me it is compulsory in coffee. Well unless there is real cream of course

You'll be glad to know, fraujackson, that I am making a mental note of where our tastes differ so that I can feed you appropriately when you visit me in the CR

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Cream on cereal is delicious! Not as an alternative to milk, but in addition. Yum!

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Cream in tea - my dad would. If he was let! He'll take cream and half a bowl of sugar in any hot drink.

I have had it once, in one of the many countries where people don't seem to have milk in it at all, and are confounded when you ask for some! Not to my taste, but I'll take it as an alternative to scalding myself. Rum in Austria was much nicer...

A friend of mine drinks hot water on its own. Tried that once, but found it revolting!

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I like hot water with with a squeeze of lemon - wakes you right up first thing in the morning

re: The cream discussion - when people talk about "cream", are we talking about straight cream (ie, comes from a cow and has no additional features ) or sweetened cream? A lot of my friends don't think cream is cream unless there's sugar added, and I find the practice very odd, but it does make me wonder about CS cream...

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Tea with cream, absolutely. I use milk, myself, but where I grew up, NOT to provide cream in one's creamer (piece of china that comes in matched set with sugar bowl) for company would have been considered rude. (It would also be rude to remark on it if the hostess couldn't afford cream and provided milk, as she would already be embarrassed about this. You'd still refer to it as cream.)

People in older* British literature often seem to use the "top of the milk." Wouldn't that be the same as cream?

*before milk was homogenized, preventing the cream from rising

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There are plenty of references in books to people being asked if they'd like milk or cream, and some of those little cartons that you get in cafés are "half and half" (cream/milk) rather than just milk. In EBD's time, cream would probably have been seen as being good for you, whereas now people tend to obsess over its fat content.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

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