Cake is an ubiquitous dessert shared amongst family and friends at celebrations of all types, for religious festivals and offerings, and to mark momentous occasions. Although not necessarily made or consumed for its nourishing qualities, cake is still known all over the world, a shared foodway that at the same time is customized and unique for different cultures.

As Nicola Humble, professor and author of Cake states, “cake is one of those foodstuffs whose symbolic function can completely overwhelm its actual status as comestible. More than anything, cake is an idea.”

November being my birthday month, I thought it would be fun to look into the history of cake and how it came to be that we celebrate with cake. While it’s not possible for this short post to comprehensively cover the world history of cake, I have chosen to focus on the history of cake through an European lens, which is where the cake evolved to the modern version we are familiar with in the United States.

Historians can trace the making of cake all the way back to the heyday of the ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Greek civilizations. “The Egyptians started off by sweetening bread dough to make something fancy, but around 3,000-5,000 years BC (Before Cake) they began making something with a specifically different name and purpose, which was known as a cake,” explains historian Alysa Levene in her book