OP: Wedding Cakes and Cultural History
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Routledge, 1992. Paperback. Very Good Plus.
Social anthropologist Simon Robert Charsley (1939–2017) was a prolific author, writing on everything from silk farming to social hierarchies in India and Africa. Additionally, he wrote two books on wedding rituals, Rites of Marrying: The Wedding Industry in Scotland (1991) and Wedding Cakes and Cultural History (1992), the latter of which we offer here.
The wedding cake, Charsley asserts, is so conspicuous as to be potentially confused for the “central focus of the ceremony” by a hypothetical visitor from Mars, rather than the marriage itself, and therefore worthy of serious analysis.
He begins with the linguistic appearance of the “bride cake” by the mid-sixteenth century. By the 17th century he notes a standardization of icing recipes—in one case, royal icing is made by beating the egg whites, by hand of course, with sugar and rosewater for two hours. Tiered cakes evolved in the 18th century, and the practice of saving the top tier for the first baby’s christening—an event theoretically related to the wedding night—appears in the 20th century.
Our copy is Near Fine, save for some dampstaining to the top and bottom edges (the interior is unmarred). Only issued in paperback.
