A treat baked into our history

THERE are few baked treats more British than the crumpet. However you eat yours — drizzled with honey or oozing melted butter — these golden pillows of toasted dough have been a tea- time staple for centuries.

It may be that crumpets can be traced back to 1382, when John Wycliffe, a Yorkshire theologian, translated a word in the Old Testament as ‘crompid cake’.

Recipes from the 1600s – a mix of flour, egg and milk – were cooked on a griddle and turned out flat.

The Welsh had a number of names for them, including pyglyd, thought to have been anglicised as pikelet.

The word crumpet may be derived from the Welsh, crempog or crempot, or the French, crompâte.

Victorians created the modern crumpet, adding yeast and baking powder to produce the holes, height and bounce.