Weddings: Wedding Cake

The modern American wedding cake emerged from various religious and cultural traditions dating back centuries. The Romans crumbled cakes made of barley or wheat over a bride’s head to symbolize fertility and abundance. Displaying their economic power and social status, the extremely wealthy of the Middle Ages arranged lavish banquets featuring highly decorative food made of exotic ingredients, including towering sculptures formed of almond paste. French chefs employed by King Charles II, during his seventeenth-century reign, took to coating pyramids of English spice cakes with sugar icing, a practice adopted on a smaller scale at weddings of the general populace.