Cake as Mythology
In the past, I’ve described myth as a narrative, or something similar to a narrative. So far, I’ve focused on the first part of this: the narrative. We’ve looked at stories woven into books or video games, but still ones which can be spoken just as easily as understood. But mythology does not necessarily always have to be written or spoken. Implicit Mythology, or mythology which exists in other forms, is also present in our world. And yes, I’ve dwelled on implicit mythology a couple of times, but each time focused on performance in one way or another. So let’s remedy that — let’s look at the storytelling and mythological power of cake.
There’s always been something tremendously amazing about cake.
For one, it’s a scientific marvel. Whoever was the first to mix crushed up wheat with eggs and milk is my hero. It’s one of those food stuffs, like bread, which makes you wonder who on earth first thought doing something like that was a good idea. Who put a bunch of living bacteria in flour and water and thought “it might look a bit iffy now, but I bet if I wait about three hours for it to get big, and then I bake it, it’ll be pretty good”. Cake is the culmination of centuries of human invention and thought, all poured into a soft batter and baked to perfection.
Cake is one of those things that carries so many things with it. It’s a requirement for celebrations, like weddings and birthdays and funerals. It makes people happy — it signals a joyous round of happy eatings. It’s as joyous on a fork as the laughter around us in the room. In fact, it brings the atmosphere of the celebration and the love around us into us, and damn is it light and fluffy and delicious. And because of its ability to feed love, it’s also just as suitable when times are not so good — when we’d rather curl up into a ball and cry through the night than face anyone around us. It brings us comfort, and eating it makes us realise that the world can’t be all that bad when it has something as amazing and delicious as cake in it.
Baked goods take time and effort to make — they cannot be dashed together with a fried egg on top. They take caring for and looking after. When we eat these baked goods, it’s impossible to not taste that care, to not feel it in the way it feels on the tongue. In this way, cake tells stories. It fills us with the emotional impact stories carry, and can even tell a narrative about the way we feel, how we feel, and why we feel — all in a bite of fluffy cake and creamy icing.
Cake can tell stories through how it tells the timing of its presence. Birthday cakes are present to mark the passing of a year. The sprinkles and sweetness to end the day fills us with the hopes of new years to come. Certain flavours also echo the necessary markers of time throughout the year: a lemon drizzle feels markedly more summer than winter, but a nice spiced ginger cake warms us on a winter’s evening. And yes, of course we can have ginger in summer and lemon in winter, but when we do, it brings something of that time to the one we’re in.
It can also mark locations. Sometimes, these locations can be broad and cultural. Black Forest Cake feels German in the way a Victoria Sponge will always be British. Whether we realise it or not, we’re tasting each part of the cake’s history in these places with every bite we have. We can taste how one culture interacted with another; feel the clashing of their spices and cooking techniques. Sometimes, one of these is lost in the memories of time, but we can always taste them, lingering on our tastebuds like a name we’ve forgotten.
To really see how cake can tell stories, we can look to other non-narrative forms of storytelling. The best to compare cake to is architecture. When we look at the buildings around us, we can learn something about their history. They tell the stories of who lived there during what times. They can tell us about past floods, or fires — markings on their bodies the lingering reminders of past traumas in not a dissimilar way to the human body. Cake, and other forms of food, hold onto their pasts, too. The techniques, the spices, the ingredients all combine to tell the stories of their past — from times of famine to times of war.
Food also tells the story of the now. I can live a life in the mouthful of a cheesecake, but I also impart the emotion and stories I spin into the food I create. The trials of new ways of doing it, the thoughts of the moment as I knead bread or mixed batter all become an ingredient I add to the mixture. Food tells the story of the person making, and the person eating. Its through these untold narratives that connections to others can be formed in similar ways to sitting round a campfire and telling stories. Our myths, both implicit and explicit, tell the stories of ourselves, whether that be in the gossip we share, or in the coffee we share while gossiping.
Cake fills the same role as narrative and myth. Like our myths focused on performance, cake is not something which can be written down. This post itself is a struggle to include all the intricate aspects of the crumb and what makes them not only delicious but remarkable. And in many ways, cake comes to life the same way mythology does. Myth exists in the performance, and is lived through the experiences of both the storyteller and the audience. Cake cannot live without the baker and the eater, and its in their interaction that cake takes on its true life.
And like mythology which shifts over time, or has multiple versions of just one story, cake, too, changes through its history. Many recipes can exist for the same cake, with minor alterations which reflect the context of the world the recipe maker lived in. Each of these variants tell a story in the same way as the written variants do. Each context is tasted as it may be heard.
Humans are all just storytelling machines — we are but narratives wrapped in flesh. These narratives can have many forms, from architecture, to performance, to the fluffiest piece of cake. Next time you find yourself gravitating to cake, think about what it is that drew you to it. What stories are being imprinted on your tongue with every bite, and what stories of yourself you also re-live as you eat.
