Eat Your Cake and Have it Too?

A visit to a Montana ghost town yielded a side trip to a historical museum. The most fascinating antique item I remember seeing was a well preserved Chinese wedding cake. At the time, it was more than one hundred years old. I said to myself, 'What would motivate someone to save this cake for so many years?' Certainly, it was passed on through several generations before ending up as an oddity in a museum.

I'm reminded of the often misquoted saying (attributed to John Heywood). "Would you eat your cake and have your cake?" In the case of the remarkably well preserved wedding cake, did the bride and groom share the lower layer of their cake with their wedding guests, saving the ornately decorated top layer as a keepsake?

According to my Aunt Dorian, who was an authority on the history of all foods involving copious amounts of sugar, the wedding cake tradition evolved through the centuries, originating in ancient Rome. There, they would break bread over the bride's head in order to endow her with fertility. Guests would gather up the crumbs and take them home for good luck.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the traditional wedding cake was becoming popular, although it usually consisted of one single layer, rather than the multi-layered confectionary masterpiece that is common today. Thus, it may very well be that the happy Chinese-American newlyweds became so enthralled with their special dessert, that they could not bear to eat ANY of it! If that was the case, they would NOT eat their cake and would HAVE their cake as long as they both shall live.