Wigs

wigs (or whigs, or wiggs) small cakes of lightly spiced and sweetened bread dough, the basic ingredients being butter, sugar, flour, milk (or cream), and yeast. Some recipes contain eggs; some contain sack. Among the spices specified are ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and saffron; caraway seeds seem always to have been included. Currants are occasionally added.

Wigs were made under that name from medieval times. Ayto (1993) says: ‘They appear to have been introduced into Britain from the Low Countries in the fourteenth century, for the name is a borrowing of Middle Dutch wigge (which etymologically means “wedge-shaped cake”).’