EasterCelebrations

Two festive foods, pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and hot cross buns on Good Friday, have survived until today. The evolution of the hot cross bun is uncertain as there apparently used to be several types of cake that were special to Good Friday. The earliest specific reference to a “hot cross bun” occurs in 1733…

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Further confusion arises as the marking of food with a cross wasn’t restricted to Good Friday buns. Right up until the early years of the last century it was normal practice when baking bread to mark the dough with a cross before putting it in the oven, and this practice is well documented from the mid-thirteenth century.

Many festive foods such as mince pies at Christmas attract superstitions which advise that good luck will come to those who follow custom, but that bad luck will result from a failure to do so, and the hot cross bun is no exception to this rule. An account from a court case of 1753 states that….

Probably the food most associated with Easter is the egg - whether of the chocolate or chicken produced variety. The egg symbolizes new life, birth and regeneration, perfect for the Easter festival. On a more mundane level, eggs were an essential part of the staple diet of rich and poor alike, but were banned for the forty days of Lent. This enforced abstinence probably at least partly explains why eggs feature so widely at Easter as people would have been celebrating their return to the menu.