An Eccles cake is a small, round cake filled with currants and made from flaky pastry with butter and can sometimes be topped with demerara sugar.
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Eccles cakes are named after the English town of Eccles. It is not known who invented the recipe, but James Birch is credited with being the first person to sell Eccles cakes on a commercial basis, which he sold from his shop at the corner of Vicarage Road and St Mary’s Road (now known as Church Street) in the town centre, in 1793.[1]
Nicknames for the Eccles cake include Squashed Fly Cake, Fly Cake, Fly Pie or even a Fly's Graveyard, owing to the appearance of the currants that it contains. Eccles cakes do not currently have Protected Geographical Status, so may be manufactured anywhere and still labelled as "Eccles" cakes.[2]
The Garibaldi biscuit shares many common ingredients with the Eccles Cake but is smaller and a dry product rather than a moist cake.
The Chorley cake (from the town of Chorley in Lancashire) is flatter in appearance, is made with shortcrust pastry rather than flaky pastry and is devoid of sugar topping.
The Currant Square is a square shaped cake with shortcrust pastry only on the top and bottom and up to an inch of currant filling.
Banbury cakes are an oval shaped cake from the town of Banbury.
The people of the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, have produced a similar pastry called a currant roll, made with flaky pastry and currants, which is rolled, baked, then cut into diagonal slices.
The traditional Chinese sweetheart cake called Kang Shi Lau Po Pin (老婆饼) is quite similar to an Eccles Cake, although the spicy fruit filling is candied melon.
Traditionally paired with Lancashire cheese, as is Chorley cake.
In the first of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, Master and Commander, Jack Aubrey is staying at The Crown in Port Mahón, Minorca. He observes: "... the place smelt of olive oil, sardines and wine; and there was not the least possibility of a Bakewell tart, an Eccles cake or even a decent suet pudding."
In the Harold Pinter play The Dumb Waiter (1957), Gus and Ben, two hit-men, are in a cellar apartment awaiting orders. Gus has brought along various snacks but Ben remains stoic and uninterested except when Gus says that he has one Eccles cake. Though Ben had earlier criticized Gus for being too interested in food and thus a lazy sort of hit-man, he shows a rare glimmer of emotion because Gus only brought one Eccles cake for himself.