The American Fine Cakes of the Early Nineteenth Century

When Charles Dickens wrote, in American Notes, published in 1842, that he could discern no difference between English and American evening parties, he was obviously not thinking of the cakes. At English parties, cakes played a minor role, but at American parties they were a principal attraction, often arrayed in a line down the center of the party table, from one end to the other. Iced “white and smooth” with dried meringue similar to, but more tender than, today’s royal icing, these cakes were fancifully decorated with swags of colored icing applied by a syringe, or with colored “sugar sand,” or with real or artificial flowers and leaves, or, after 1830, with filigree sugar devices purchased at confectioners’ shops. As Lettice Bryan, a wealthy southern planter’s wife, remarked in The Kentucky Housewife, published in 1839, the point was to “dress all your fine cakes in different attire, suitable to the names and materials of which they are made, and arrange them handsomely upon the table, that the company may see the different kinds of cake”—or, more precisely, see how many different cakes the hostess had the means to supply.