Slice of history: the secrets of royal wedding cakes
As Prince Harry and Meghan opt for an organic lemon and elderflower creation, they are shedding tiers and tradition, says Dr Annie Gray
‘Queen Victoria’s cakes were hugely influential; descriptions made their way across the Empire’
Meghan and Harry have chosen their cake, and it is to be a celebration of spring; a zingy, floral confection with firm nods to all of the current fashionable food preoccupations – seasonality, provenance and natural ingredients. Claire Ptak, the Hackneybased chef-pâtissier of Violet Bakery who will be making it, shares a Californian background with the bride, and the commission will doubtless boost her profile.
It was not ever thus. The intense interest in royal fare has gathered pace over the last 200 years, especially when it comes to big occasions and, apart from coronations, which are always tinged with uncertainty, there’s little bigger than a wedding.
As constitutional power waned in the latter years of Queen Victoria’s reign and the monarchy was reinvented under Edward VII, one of the Royal family’s primary roles became bringing a bit of pomp into the everyday lives of the people. Coronations were used to show wealth and power, to give out wine and food with abandon. It was not until Victoria that weddings, and more to the point, wedding cake, became a focus of attention – and imitation.
Fruit cakes loaded with expensive ingredients had long been part of celebrations for the wealthy, but over the course of the 18th century, they gained first a sugar topping, and then an almond layer. Charles Elmé Francatelli, fleetingly cook to Queen Victoria in the 1840s, shared a recipe for a dried cherry-laden plum cake, giving instructions for icing it for a wedding: “the ornaments must be all white, and some blossoms and sprigs… orange flowers should also be introduced”.
Francatelli didn’t make Victoria’s cake, though. The confectionery was separate from the main kitchens, headed, at the time of her nuptials, by John Mawditt. The wedding cake he produced for his new Queen was lauded as an “exquisite compound”, although one critic also described it as “as plain as a sugar-loaf… so cheese-like that all the poetic effect of the allegorical figures… and the elegance of the artificial flowers round its sides cannot carry off its clumsiness”.
The cake weighed 300lb and was very simple: large, round and with foot-high sugar models of Britannia blessing the bride and groom, who were bizarrely dressed in togas. It was also almost certainly brightly coloured, with the detail picked out in what was available at the time: green from spinach, yellow from saffron, red from cochineal plus gold and silver leaf. It was a little behind the times, but it was not the only cake.
For as humongous as it was, it wasn’t big enough to provide for all the guests. The top confectioners of London were also pressed into service, supplying more than 30 extra cakes. Gunters, the most famous firm of its day, provided the cake for the state banquet, said to be “naturally and delicately fanciful… too pretty to eat.”
Very few got to see Victoria’s cakes, but they were hugely influential; descriptions made their way across the Empire and the lavishly decorated fruit cake with beautiful icing rapidly caught on.
In the late 1840s, piping gained popularity and, as even the superrich stopped employing confectioners, it was shops such as Gunters that benefited. Unlike the latest royal cakemaker, however, the confectioners remained anonymous.
For the marriage of the Queen’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, royal confectioners still worked with one large cake, but they added two tiers of pure, white sugarwork. It was far more delicate than its predecessor, despite being 7ft high, and included fine sugar portraits of the monarchs. It was only a short step to having the second tier made of cake as well, and by 1882, when Victoria’s eighth child, Leopold, was married, royal cakes were up to three tiers. In this case the cake was made by Bollands of Chester and featured frolicking dolphins, and the arms of imperial dominions.
Stacked cakes, generally topped with a vase of flowers, remained the norm for royal weddings until the Twenties, and they became standard for the everyday weddings of the upper and middle classes. Some confectioners experimented, however, with another way to add wow factor, and had started separating the tiered cakes with columns, which were used for the wedding cake of George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-lyon.
Post-war, the world had changed and this cake was not made in the royal kitchens, or by a specialist confectioners, but by Mcvitie’s. To ensure it still led, rather than followed, the crowd, it had four tiers, as well as the customary vase of flowers, and weighed 800lb. It was influential, although not as innovative as its forebears, and today defines the “traditional” wedding cake.
In the 20th century, royal wedding cakes became somewhat political. Now that they were no longer made inhouse, the details of the makers and, indeed, the ingredients took on extra importance. In a period of strict rationing, Princess Elizabeth’s 1947 cake was made with ingredients sent by wellwishers. The bottom tier had a slice ready cut and tied with ribbon so that the bride could pull it out as the groom sliced it with a ceremonial sword. Charles and Diana’s cake, meanwhile, was made by the Royal Navy.
In recent decades the Royal family has sought to change: gone is the gravity-defying rich fruit cake, stiff with icing and impossible to cut, and in has come a less dense variety and fondant icing.
There were eight levels to William and Kate’s enormous cake, but they weren’t pillared, just loosely stacked, the icing was soft and erred towards leaves and lace. William also had a groom’s cake, made by Mcvitie’s – reinforcing that longstanding connection – but the concept itself remains an American import.
Charles and Camilla opted for a fruit cake, with one level and a dome: there were crests, but no ships or cavorting creatures, and certainly no allegorical figures (though there were a few thousand extra slices made just for distribution).
Harry and Meghan are departing still further from their Victorian forebears, with a cake that isn’t even a fruit cake.
Royal cakes may no longer be as innovative as they once were, but they remain just as influential. We may not yet know what shape Ptak’s invention will take, but with a mix of east London cool and California chic, it looks likely that this organic lemon and elderflower creation will be the one to pave the way for a more modern wedding dessert.