Eccles Cake

the Lancashire currant cake: a fistful of buttered currants spiced with nutmeg and candied peel, wrapped in flaky pastry, slashed three times, and baked until the sugared top caramelises

Origin: England

From the journey of Currant.

The Eccles cake is named for the small Lancashire town where James Birch is said to have begun selling it from his shop on Vicarage Road in 1793, and it is the plainest and best of the family of English currant pastries. It has a Nonconformist history as well as a commercial one: the cakes were associated with the Eccles wakes, the town's annual religious festival, and the Puritan authorities of the seventeenth century had already banned the eating of such 'wakes cakes' as a heathen indulgence, a prohibition that did the recipe no lasting harm. Its ingredients are a direct record of English trade, for the small dried currants at its heart came from the Ionian islands in Levant Company ships, and the candied peel from the Mediterranean citrus trade, whilst the butter, flour, and sugar were domestic. The cake is defined by its ratio: the filling should be so generous that the pastry strains around it and the dark fruit shows through, which is why the cakes are always slashed three times across the top, both to let the steam escape and, in the traditional explanation, for the Trinity. In Lancashire they are eaten with a slice of crumbly Lancashire cheese, which is not a modern conceit but the proper way.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 375 g all-butter puff or rough puff pastry

Filling

  • 200 g dried currants
  • 50 g unsalted butter
  • 70 g dark muscovado sugar
  • 50 g mixed candied peel, finely chopped
  • 0.5 whole nutmeg, freshly grated
  • 0.5 tsp ground allspice
  • 1 whole lemon, zest finely grated
  • 1 tbsp brandy or rum (optional)

To Finish

  • 1 whole egg white, lightly beaten
  • 3 tbsp demerara or granulated sugar

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a small pan, stir in the muscovado sugar until dissolved, then take off the heat and add the currants, candied peel, nutmeg, allspice, lemon zest, and the spirit if using. Mix well and leave to cool completely.
  2. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface to about 4 mm and cut ten discs of about 11 cm using a saucer or a large cutter. Gather and re-roll the trimmings once, no more.
  3. Place a heaped tablespoon of filling in the centre of each disc. Draw the edges up over the fruit, pinch them firmly together to seal, and turn the parcel over so the seam is underneath. Flatten gently with the palm, then roll lightly with a pin to a disc of about 8 cm, until the fruit shows dark through the pastry.
  4. Set the cakes well apart on a lined baking sheet and chill for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan). Brush the tops with egg white, sprinkle thickly with the sugar, and cut three parallel slashes across each cake with the point of a sharp knife.
  5. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until well risen, deep golden, and the sugar on top has caramelised. Any filling that escapes will scorch to a dark toffee, which is correct. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes and eat warm or at room temperature.

Notes

The essential thing is that the fruit be currants, the small hard dried grapes of the Aegean, and not raisins or sultanas, which are too large and too sweet and give a cloying result. Eccles cakes are best on the day they are baked but revive well with 5 minutes in a hot oven. They can be frozen unbaked, glazed and slashed, and go straight from the freezer into the oven with 5 minutes added. The neighbouring Chorley cake is the same idea in a plainer coat: currants in shortcrust rather than puff, unsugared, rolled flatter, and eaten spread with butter.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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