Twelfth-Day cakes and Twelfth-Day observances have, however, faded almost into oblivion in these utilitarian days, when even children begin to say, * What is the use of this and that?' but in Ireland many of the old customs are still kept up, and a thimble, a crooked sixpence, and a wedding ring are baked in cakes, the first for the old maid, the second for wealth, and the ring, of course, for a wedding; but, if memory serves aright, these fortune-telling cakes are eaten on Halloween instead of Twelfth Day, and I do not know whether the Twelfth-Day 'King of the Bean' is still elected. We read that in 1613 the gentlemen in Gray's Inn were permitted by Lord Bacon to perform a Twelfth-Day masque at Whitehall, in which a character called Baby Cake was attended by an usher bearing a great cake with a bean and a pease.*

The 'King of the Bean' is supposed to have been derived from the Roman Saturnalia, in which lots were drawn with beans as to who should be king.

There is, however, one cake that seems to grow in favour year by year, and that is the bridecake, upon which all the confectioner's art is lavished, until it seems almost a sin to cut it and destroy its beauty. In fact, some of the more elaborate specimens are so made that the cake may be abstracted without injuring the external case. The monster cake presented to the Queen on her Jubilee was thus made, so that the exterior was on view intact among the other presents, although the kernel was gone.

Lawn-tennis has created a new cake, which is highly appreciated. We believe this originated in Bath, famous for many confectioners' chefs d'oeuvres, which can hardly be met with elsewhere, such as the Sally Lunn, which is quite a different thing there to the cake known under that name elsewhere, and the Bath bun, which can only be eaten in perfection in Bath. The lawn-tennis cake is a rich plum cake, made rather thin and flat, with a good covering of almond paste, iced, and with a sprinkling of sweetmeats or green angelica cut very fine on the top.

* Chambers's 'Book of Days,' vol. i., p. 63.

In Cornwall many peculiar cakes may be met with, but almost all of them contain saffron, which does not commend them to all palates.

Scotland is known as 'the land of cakes,' and the variety to be met with there is astonishing. The best known is the shortbread, which is now sold largely in London - especially at Christmas - daintily put up in boxes and with a motto in candied peel on the top; but this shortbread varies greatly: that made in Aberdeen is the best, especially that sent to Balmoral, which is said to be made of crushed macaroons.

There is a well-known cake which should rather be classed under the head of puddings; this is the pancake, still religiously eaten on Shrove Tuesday, which the old riddle has, in consequence, designated as the greatest fryday of the year. The custom of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday dates back to very remote times, and the tossing them in the pan was the occasion of much merriment. Formerly the master of the house was always called upon to toss the first pancake, which was generally so clumsily done as to cause it either to ascend the chimney, or to find a place on the kitchen floor, for which the cook demanded a fine.

Chambers's 'Book of Days' contains an interesting account of tossing pancakes in Westminster School, the cook being obliged to toss the cake over the bar which divides the upper from the lower school, which being done the boys scramble for the cake, and the one who secures it unbroken, and carries it to the Deanery, receives an honorarium of a guinea.

The same article gives the following quaint description of the pancake by the poet Taylor: -

'There is a bell rung, called the Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or humanity. Then there is a thing called wheaten flour, which the cooks do mingle with water, eggs, spice, and other tragical magical enchantments, and then they put it by little-and-little into a frying-pan of boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing (like the Lernian snakes in the reeds of Acheron) until at last, by the skill of the cook, it is transformed into the form of a flip-jack called a pancake, which ominous incantation the ignorant people do devour very greedily.'

Eggs, as a great ingredient in the pancake, are much in request on Shrove Tuesday, which, in Cornwall, gave rise to a very barbarous sport, for the hens, which had not laid an egg before Shrove Tuesday, were placed on the barn floor and beaten to death, or sometimes a hen, with some bells hung round it, was tied to a man's back, and others blindfolded and armed with boughs, ran after him and struck at the bird, guided by the bells, and when the bird had been killed in this manner it was boiled with bacon, and eaten with the pancakes.

The British pancake has been transformed in France into the omelette, the vol-au-vent, the souffle, supplemented by delicate tartlets of extreme lightness, very sweet and full of cream, iced and ornamented with dried cherries and pistachio nuts. All these things have been elaborately evolved from the inner consciousness of many generations of French chefs, but primitive puddings doubtless consisted simply of grain of different kinds boiled in water or milk, to which various ingredients were added, according to taste, after the fashion of the national dish of Barbary called cuscosco, which consists of a sort of paste or porridge made of crumbled bread and enriched with small pieces of meat, vegetables, and condiments. This is placed in a large wooden or earthen bowl set in the middle of the company, each one thrusting their fingers in the bowl, stirring its contents, and helping themselves to such tit-bits as they may fancy.

This cuscosco reminds one of a famous dish of our ancestors known as furmity, furmante, or frumenty, formerly indispensable at Christmas, but now relegated to Mid-Lent or Mothering Sunday, when the lesson for the day read in the churches, is of Joseph and his brethren, for this dish is popularly supposed to be that wherewith Joseph regaled his brothers, giving a double portion to Benjamin. The name comes probably from froment (wheat), in French, which would point to its introduction by the Normans. In Bath the wheat is sold in basins, boiled ready for use. In Chambers's 'Book of Days' the following recipe is given as the most ancient known: - 'Take clean wheat, and bray it in a mortar that the hulls be all gone off, and seethe it till it burst, and take it up and let it cool; and take clean fresh broth and sweet milk of almonds, or sweet milk of kine, and temper it all; and take the yolks of eggs. Boil it a little, and set it down, and mess it forth with fat venison or fresh mutton.' Venison was seldom served without this accompaniment; but furmity, sweetened with sugar, was a favourite dish of itself, the 'clean broth' being omitted when a lord was to be the partaker.*