Part. I. Preliminaries

• The British wedding cake in the late twentieth century
  Cakes in weddings
  Their form and ranges of variation
  The changing trade in the 1980s
  Does a wedding cake mean anything?
• How distinctive is the British cake?
  Europe
  America
  Australia
  Outwith the west
  Themes
• Cultural creation: myth, history and language
  The Victorian myth of origin
  Cultural history and its problems
  Recipes as evidence
  'Wedding cake' and 'bride cake': terms in language
• When the wedding cake was not yet and might never have been
  Feasts, food and subtleties
  Cake, great cakes and marriage rites
  Alternatives and their persistence

Part. II. The making of the British wedding cake

• Great cakes, plum(b) cakes and bride cakes
  Great cakes for weddings
  From great cakes to plum(b) cakes
  The bride cake
  Cakes for weddings and other festivities
• Confectionery and icing
  Sugarpaste and the beginnings of confectionery
  Marchpanes
  The development of icing
  Double icing
  Marzipan
  Decoration and colour
  Piping: 'a new art form'
• The rise of the Victorian cake and its successors
  Pieces montees
  Royal weddings and the high rising cake
  The trade and the three-tier standard
  Separating the tiers
  Colour, top pieces and other ornamentation

Part. III. Users, uses and meanings

• Uses and their evolution
  Cake-breaking
  Dreaming and divination
  Display
  Cutting the cake
  Keeping it for the christening
  Conclusion: uses and forms
• Meanings and interpretation towards a theory of cultural change?
  Objects, custom and meanings
  Phenomena of cultural change

Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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