Mothering Day
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Historically, the fourth Sunday of lent have been called a day of mothering in which the custom in United Kingdom have been for adult children to travel home to share time with their mothers as if it were a Mother's Day celebration. Children would bring home with them what people called simnel cake and mothers would prepare special dishes such as furmety, a pudding “composed of wheat grains boiled in sweet milk and flavored with sugar and spices and rich with plums.” Simnel cake, possibly first made with the simila grain, can best be described as similar to a fruitcake. The recipe for simnel cake remained a closely guarded secret. But we do know that it had been boiled first and water in there after baked. The crust typically had been yellow from the use of saffron and often times decorated using other strategies. Some described it as a cake “tasting like plum duff, but resembling a pork pie.”
