Eccles Cake

A right sorry Lancastrian I make. Until this summer, I could not tell a Chorley cake from an Eccles cake. I have a fondness for both, but have unwisely been using the two terms interchangeably when the two items are fairly distinctive. The Chorley is flatter and has a thin filling of currants between two layers of shortcrust pastry, whereas the Eccles cake is made of puff pastry and has a thicker concentration of currants than its colleague.

The Eccles cake was likely invented by eighteenth-century entrepreneur, Elizabath Raffald, author of The Experienced English Housekeeper, a work from which the better-known Mrs Beeton apparently plagiarised. She includes a recipe for ‘Sweet Patties’ which seem to be the Eccles cake. Her husband John was also something of an businessman; although the pair met while in service at Cheshire, they soon left for Manchester where they sold seeds, cakes, town directories and the aforementioned cookery book. John, sadly, was a drunkard, and after Elizabath died in 1781, was pursued by creditors, losing everything; he had lived too extravagantly after his wife’s demise. Amazingly, he found Jesus Christ and became a Wesleyan, dying at the ripe of age of 85 in 1809.

Elizabeth was a greater than John. She worked as hard, if not harder, and published works which even today continue to be read and enjoyed. And let us not forget the great Eccles cake, for which my tastebuds are always prepared to offer welcome and my belly a home. John, though not lacking talent, was a wastrel in comparison. Yet Christ transformed him and saved him. Of Mrs Raffald’s soul, I dare not speak, for I do not know its state when it entered the vast halls of eternity. Although she was the worthier of the two, worth and value do not ultimately count. Only Christ counts for anything in the end. In Psalm 119:103 we read:

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Eccles cakes make a fine pudding after a meal, or a pleasant sweetmeat with a cup of tea, but Christ is sweeter and more wholesome. Let us hope that their inventor found this out, as did her husband.