Wedding Cakes and Cultural History

"The earliest recipe recorded fromsic Britain for a dish specifically for a wedding is in fact a pie," writes Charsley, an anthropologist at the University of Glasgow. The wedding cake as we know it today–with its successively smaller layers, supporting pillars, fancy frosting and festoons–had its origins some hundred years later, in a confection that commemorated the marriage of one of Queen Victoria's daughters in 1859. Even then, a few refinements were missing: only the base tier was actually cake (the rest were pure sugar), and the layers were stacked like hat boxes. It would take the wedding of Prince Leopold in 1882 before guests could enjoy an entirely "cake" wedding cake, and another 20 years before the tiers were separated by columns (usually disguised pieces of a broom handle).