Cake: A Global History

(Hardback)

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Description

What birthday, wedding, bar mitzvah or children's party would be complete without a cake In nutritional terms cake is completely unnecessary, and yet it plays a crucial role in celebrations and rituals within the majority of cultures around the world. Despite being such a popular foodstuff, however, cake is a curiously neglected subject; Cake: A Global History redresses the balance by closely examining the origin of modern cake, and its development and evolution through time. Nicola Humble explores the meanings, legends, rituals and symbolism attached to cake through the ages and dispels many myths and misconceptions.

Reviews

'I had been awaiting Nicola Humble's Cake: A Global History with as much anticipation as a warm Dundee cake coming out of the oven on a winter's afternoon. A mere 150 pages in length and the colour of creamed butter and sugar, this is the story of cake and its place in our history, its myths, legends and folklore ... I have found it as difficult to put down as a slice of village-fete chocolate cake.' Nigel Slater, The Observer 'This small book was a lot like a good slice of cake to me, because when I finished it I wished there were more.' - Times Higher Education 'These are food memoirs, salacious and exotic, colorful, powdered, sweet, greasy and globe-trotting ... sharp and speedy little reads, spotted with off-kilter illustrations' - Chicago Tribune 'I devoured this volume in one sitting' - Text Journal of Writing

Author Bio

Nicola Humble is Professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. She is the author of Culinary Pleasures: Cook Books and the Transformation of British Food, as well as Victorian Heroines: Representations of Femininity in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art.