At Gambino’s, we make our fair share of wedding cakes! Whether you prefer traditional or something that’s never been seen before on this Earth, we love to be a part of our customers’ most special of days.
With the amount of time we spend making wedding cakes, it’s given us quite a bit of time to think up a few questions. One of those being, Where did the tradition of the wedding cake even come from?
We decided it was time to find an answer! Join us on a delicious journey through time.
Beginning with the ancients
It’s possible that the idea of a wedding cake began with the ancient Greeks, though it was the Romans whose matrimonial dessert we know more about.
In ancient Rome, the wedding cake wouldn’t be the sweet, sugar-topped version we know today. Rather, it was a dry barley cake or wheat cake that was featured. The grain cake/bread, known as a mustaceum wasn’t served as you might imagine, however. Rather, the groom took the cake and broke it over his bride’s head. The couple would eat a few crumbs, but most were left to guests, who -- by eating the fallen crumbs -- were said to be wishing the bride and groom luck and fertility in the years ahead.
Later, the slightly-less-ancient Greeks chose a more subtle tradition by serving honey and sesame cakes at their weddings to represent an abundant and sweet life. Meanwhile, the Egyptians served honey-sweetened cakes of their own at wedding feasts, made from wheat flour and milk.
Each culture seems to have done things slightly differently, but whether the tradition was around sharing, grain, and/or sweetness, the symbolism was relatively consistent: prosperity and renewal through fertility for the married couple.
Wedding cakes get medieval
By the time history marches into medieval Europe, the wedding cake custom -- particularly the recipe -- had changed.
In England, for example, wedding guests stacked small spice buns into a high pile. If the bride and groom managed to kiss over the tall stack without knocking the buns over, they were expected to have a prosperous life together. (Talk about high stakes!) Unmarried guests were sometimes encouraged to take home a piece of the cake to tuck under their pillow in hopes they, too, would marry soon.
Legend has it that a French pastry chef attending an English wedding in the Middle Ages witnessed this tradition of piling buns. Upon returning to Paris he tried his variation on the idea, inventing the popular towering Croquembouche in the process. The Croquembouche is France’s traditional wedding cake, built with profiteroles of various fillings and often decorated with colors, caramel, and sugar.
Pie Time
Things got a little wild in the 16th and 17th centuries. By then, British weddings had shifted to a “bride pie,” sometimes spelled “bride pye.” These were savory pies with ingredients mixed together such as sweet potatoes, minced meats, cockscombs (that’s the fleshy red crest on the head of a rooster), lamb testicles, oysters, sweet breads, chestnuts, gravy, and spices and seasonings like salt, nutmeg, white wine, butter, and citrus.
Sometimes you might find boiled calf’s feet in your bride pie, and even live birds which would fly out of a secret compartment when the pie was cut. In Robert May’s 1685 bride pie recipe, he includes those live birds or -- it keeps getting crazier -- live snakes to shock and entertain guests.
Unfortunately for those of you feeling squeamish at the idea of all this, each guest was expected to eat a piece of the bride pie for the sake of politeness as well as good luck. Another tradition from the time is that a glass ring was hidden in the middle of the “dessert.” The single woman who found the ring was said to be the next to marry, just as we say to the woman who catches the flower bouquet in modern weddings.
Mummified wedding cake
For those of us who prefer sweet over snakes when it comes to wedding cakes, the good news was that sugar was becoming plentiful in England. The brides pie transformed into a bride’s cake, which was frequently a dense fruit cake made with nuts, spices, and dried fruits. A fruit cake was practical because they lasted much better than other cakes, which was essential before modern refrigeration.
As the 17th century continued on, it was common to have two cakes: one for the bride and one for the groom. The groom’s cake -- which is still popular in New Orleans and in much of the American South -- was, at that time in history, usually the rich, darker fruit cake. But the larger cake belonged to the bride and this is where we see a major characteristic of today’s wedding cakes begin. The bride’s cake was often a pound cake covered in the white icing we’re accustomed to today, and the color of that icing was meant to symbolize the bride’s virginity and purity.
The whiteness of the cake also became a symbol of familial wealth, as did the size of the cake. It was said that the larger the cake, the wealthier the family.
Of course, few families were wealthier than Great Britain’s Royal Family. This was displayed prominently when, in 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert. Their marriage was marked with an enormous 300-pound plum cake topped with a pure white icing. The icing was called “Royal Icing” and turned into the hallmark of wedding cakes we’re familiar with today.
In addition to showing off a family’s wealth (and the bride’s purity), the icing also acted as a natural preservative by encasing the cake. This might explain why pieces of Queen Victoria’s original wedding cake -- with the help of alcohol, sugar, dried fruit, and the keepsake presentation boxes in which they were served -- can still be found to this day. One slice is actually in The United States Library of Congress!
These slices, however, are absolutely not healthy to eat according to archivists and historians. They have essentially become mummified.
Modern wedding cake
Some say the modern wedding cake originated in 1882 at the wedding of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. The iconic tiers of his cake were made individually. A very dense icing was used that would eventually harden. As the icing hardened, the individual cakes could be stacked on top of one another -- a groundbreaking innovation at the time.
Modern wedding cakes often still use this method, although they frequently embed dowels into the cake to add support and help carry the weight of the cake.
During World War I and World War II, sugar rations forced couples to settle for smaller cakes. Many rented cardboard display tiers to make their cakes look more impressive for photos. But that rationing had come to an end by 1947, when Princess Elizabeth -- the eventual Queen Elizabeth II -- and Prince Philip showed off a 500 pound wedding cake at their ceremony!
Putting the final touches to the principal wedding cake made by McVitie and Price, from a 1947 newspaper.
When it came to wedding cakes, what was popular in the United Kingdom soon became popular in the United States and much of the rest of the world, too. In the 20th century, the invention of commercial refrigeration and accessible mass-produced baking supplies allowed cakes to be built even higher with little fear of spoilage and in more complex vanilla and sponge structures.
That is the style we see most commonly today -- lighter sponges and buttercream frosting. Though, of course, endless varieties and deviations are possible, and we at Gambino’s want to work with wedding couples to create the cake of their dreams.
Of course, in New Orleans we always do things a little differently. So if you want to learn about the origin of our region’s unique wedding cake flavor, check out our recent blog post here.
