Rumor has it that Mary, Queen of Scots, did not like candied cherries in her cakes, and the inception of this cake was the result of a workaround that swapped in blanched almonds for the customary stone fruit. James Keiller & Sons, a marmalade company in Dundee, Scotland, coined the name Dundee cake to describe the modern version, which it developed and began mass-producing in the mid-nineteenth century.
