I flew down to Tesco's and tracked down some Chorley cakes. They were smaller than I remembered. But you'll never believe this - they were made in East Kilbride! And the Eccles cakes I bought were made in Ardwick.
The whole world has gone mad.
If I discover next that Kendal mint cake isn't made in Kendal and that Victoria sponges aren't made by Queen Victoria I'm going to give up and stick to Empire biscuits.
Made in the British Empire, of course.
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6 comments:
See this extract from Manchester online. Even more disillusion? or is he having us on?
The very first recorded instance of the Eccles cake was during the time of The Crusades, the year being 1191 when Richard The Lionheart was besieging the port city of Acre. It is in fact an ancient Turkish dish which was named after one of Saladins generals Beha-ed-Dineccles. Due to its excellent properties of keeping fresh in hot weather, because of its high content of raisins and sultanas which were in plentiful supply it was an ideal food wrapped in pastry for the Muslims who were under siege in Acre. Towards the end of the siege with ammunition running low within Acre, Beha-ed-Dineccles men started throwing these at the Crusaders who noticed when they hit their shields and the ground they burst open to reveal the ingredients. The Crusaders who were running low on food started picking these up and eating them. They called them Eccles cakes after the general Beha-de-Dineccles and the recipe was brought back to England after The Crusades with lots of people through the years claiming it was they who invented the recipe, when in fact it is an old Turkish dish and not connected with the town of Eccles at all.
Professor B Hampton, Oxford
21/10/2004 at 16:27
For a supposed Oxford don, you’ve been tragically misinformed. Anyone who’s leafed through my massive tome, Great Bunfights of the Middle Ages, would know that Eccles cakes are simply an abbreviation for Ecclesiastical cakes. These were baked every Moanday morning to pacify monastic scribes when their spelling was checked by the Spanish Inkqisition. The scribes got so fed up trying to spell Ecclesiastical, especially when the Inkqisition forced them to sit on a toast-rack if they got it wrong, that they shortened it to Eccles. The scribes petitioned the Grand Inkquisitor to be allowed to use cut and paste instead, but this was found to be impractical because the calves whose skin they were writing on ran away whenever they spotted the scissors. The calves got pretty fed up too, and suggested the scribes use paper and Biros instead. The scribes thought this was a great idea, but when they discovered that Biros wouldn’t be invented for several hundred years they revolted and refused to write any more. As a result Henry VIII began the Reformation and deleted all the monasteries, but the trauma of Moanday morning is of course still with us.
Flippin' eck. Aren't those squashed flies inside then? Or were those abolished in the reformation too?
I was always led to believe they were currants. Squashed fly cakes would be even tastier for a pigeon, though.
Same for Fish. Woodlice, Cornflakes, flies...I'm even partial to Coconut Macaroons.
Coconut macaroons? Ugh! Chocolate brownies, now there are some cakes you can get your beak into.
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