As we approach Bonfire Night, shops across the UK are stocking up on parkin, traditionally consumed whilst watching the fireworks.
However, Derbyshire has its own unique variation on a seasonal ginger-based treat eaten on November 5 – Thor (or Thar, or Tharf) Cake.
Despite the ‘cake’ element of the name, in form it more closely resembles a spiced ginger biscuit.
As to the ‘Thor’ aspect… ‘Thor Is the Norse Strong God; can [the cakes] be a survival of the Danish conquest, or is that the too tempting conclusion against which local historians have always to be guarded?’ speculated Norah E. Toft, a Derbyshire WI member in an article about Derbyshire recipes in this very magazine (in case you’re feeling short-changed that I’m retreading the same ground as Norah here, it was the January 1934 issue…).
The stronghold of Thor Cake was traditionally the Derbyshire Dales (around Bakewell, Matlock and Wirksworth) and the Hope Valley, where communal Thar Cake suppers were held at Bradwell.
Children’s author Alison Uttley, who grew up at Castle Top Farm near Cromford, recalled eating Thor Cakes on Bonfire Night: ‘We ate it under the stars, with mugs of hot milk, or spiced elderberry wine for adults. We watched the sparks fly, we shouted at the fireworks as we had our feast’.
Ginger first reached England around the 11th century, a prized spice from the mystic East which as well as a culinary ingredient was also used as a perfume, stimulant and in magical potions.
Derbyshire folk seem to have acquired a taste for it. Ashbourne has its own unique gingerbread recipe – legend tells it was bequeathed to the town by a French prisoner-of-war billeted in Ashbourne following the Napoleonic Wars.
The Ashbourne Gingerbread Shop on St John Street is an impressive Tudor building dating to 1492. Now run as a branch of the Bird’s Bakery chain, it no longer sells the town’s distinctive recipe, but Ashbourne gingerbread can be obtained from the nearby Heritage Centre.
Wardlow, meanwhile, love gingerbread so much they stage an annual Gingerbread Festival at the end of summer.
Formerly, like many surrounding White Peak villages, Wardlow produced a well dressing every year, but this died out in 2009 owing to a lack of volunteers.
As an alternative method of fundraising for the village hall, the Gingerbread Festival arose through the reminiscences of Wardlow’s oldest resident, Frank Robinson.
On my 2017 visit you could sample gingerbread biscuits, gingerbread green tea, and two varieties of ginger cake.
Elsewhere, Wakes Week was another excuse for indulging a sweet tooth, as villages across Derbyshire downed tools and enjoyed a week of festivities en masse.
A small handful of Peakland villages including Winster, Tideswell and Hope still celebrate their Wakes Weeks.
As part of the week of feasting, Wakes Cakes were traditionally made and consumed. Jill Armitage’s Traditional Derbyshire Fare helpfully compiles Wakes Cakes recipes from various Derbyshire locations (Winster, Melbourne, Ashbourne, Kirk Langley and Wirksworth) for you to have a go at making yourself - as well as a choice of three Thor Cake recipes, from Carsington, Castleton and Bradwell.
The Derby Telegraph of January 10 1938 reported ‘an ancient custom was observed in Duffield yesterday’ when Epiphany cakes were distributed to Sunday school children by Mr. R. Yeomans, noting, ‘This custom has been observed by members of the Yeomans family for many years’.
The paper helpfully explained Ephiphany cakes are ‘richly coloured yellow to commemorate the gold of Epiphany, white icing to represent purity, and comfits representing colours of Christian nations’.
Ephiphany eve is Twelfth Night, and another Derbyshire locale formerly using this religious festival as an excuse for cake-consuming is Chesterfield, whose Victorian bakers clustered around the Market Place gave out free Twelfth Night cakes to customers alongside running an annual lottery.
This practice ended when the bakers realised they were making too great a loss, but a new yearly festive tradition of ‘Monster Cakes’ evolved instead.
For Christmas 1855, the publicity-savvy Poole took the concept further, the Monster Cake being so big it weighed a ton, measuring 6ft 6in in diameter and 3ft 4 in high.
In November 1856 Poole was promising in the local press ‘to surpass his former efforts by making the Largest and Best Cake ever made in the World!’
By now, a rival baker named Reynolds had got in on the act, baking his own Monster Cakes, although neither the quality of his prizes nor the scale of his cake matched Poole.
Derbyshire’s most famous dessert is of course the Bakewell pudding, a dish legend tells us was accidentally created by a flustered cook at the town’s Rutland Hotel.
It’s practically illegal to visit Bakewell and not sample a Bakewell pudding (or Bakewell tart – a later innovation which has probably superseded the original pudding) at one of the town’s bakeries or tearooms.
Not to be outdone, a town further up the A6 devised its own eponymous afters - although Buxton pudding never quite took off to the same extent.
The recipe was in existence by 1868 as the Derby Mercury of November 4 that year reported Buxton puddings were served at a meal given for the Mayor of Derby.
John Dunstan in Old Derbyshire Desserts supplies a recipe, noting that it closely resembles a Bakewell pudding.
One of my best sources for local folklore and traditions is an obscure 1954 pamphlet I came across in the Derbyshire Record Office, Treasury of Folklore 32: Legendary Lore of Derbyshire by Stanley Jackson Coleman - one of many publications covering folklore of the English counties (and beyond) self-published by Coleman from his folklore studies centre on the Isle of Man.
It contains a section on ‘Dishes of Derbyshire’ where, alongside Bakewell pudding and Ashbourne gingerbread, is a glancing reference to 'Langwith Pudding'.
Neither my mum nor my aunties who grew up nearby at Bolsover had heard of a Langwith Pudding; nor had anyone at Langwith Parish Council when I emailed them about the mystery desert (Langwith could be missing a trick here, given the volume of tourists pouring into Bakewell).
The internet seemingly knows nothing about this obscure dish either – if any Langwith-based readers have any recipes for it lurking within the family archive, please do enlighten us.
Other forgotten fancies peculiar to our county collected by Coleman include ‘Derby gondas (cheese)’, ‘Medley pie’ and ‘Red Whortleberry jelly’.
In many Peakland villages in midwinter, usually Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, a festive drink called posset was traditionally consumed. The making of the drink was a communal affair with various members of the village chipping in, as Fanny Thornhill Needham of Alport recalled:
‘On Christmas Eve the farmers let you have a pint of milk. The Youlgrave people came at 6 a.m. with lanterns and Alport went at 9... At the public house anyone was given beer for their posset and the grocers gave you sugar, nutmeg and ginger for it. At the baker's customers got two candles for a shilling loaf and one candle for a sixpenny loaf. You drank the posset on Christmas Eve and the candles were all decorated with cut paper.’
The High Peak News of January 5 1884 reported the festive generosity of a local benefactor living at one of Winster’s large houses who supplied less well-off villagers with ingredients to make the hearty festive drink:
‘On Christmas Eve, with her accustomed open-handed liberality, Mrs. Brittlebank, of Oddo House, gave to the families of Winster and neighbourhood, the usual big loaf, ale, &c., each, without which the Christmas Eve “posset,” for which the village is famous, could not be made’.
An example is displayed in Eyam Museum; the plague victims of Eyam are known to have drunk posset as a desperate attempt at staving off the effects of the disease.
At Youlgrave an element of divination was introduced through depositing the hostess' wedding ring into the bowl of posset. The assembled guests each took a spoonful and whoever fished out the ring would be ‘sure to be married before the year was out’.
If reading this has got your mouth watering and craving a sweet treat that is uniquely Derbyshire, you could head to Tideswell, where the renegade owners of Tindall’s Deli disregard the seasonal nature of two of these traditional recipes, selling both Wakes Cakes and Thar Cakes all year round.
