Seeing some Eccles cakes in Lewes got me thinking. Lewes, SE England, is a long way from the Eccles cake’s origins: Eccles, in Greater Manchester (and formerly Lancashire), NW England.
Why have these small cakes, made with flaky pastry and a currant filling, become commonplace in England when so many other traditional, regional products are virtually forgotten? After all, there’s nothing terribly unique about a product made with flour, sugar, fat and dried fruit. Indeed, other variables not unlike the Eccles cake include the Banbury cake* (Oxfordshire), the Chorley cake (Lancashire) and even the Cornish heavy, which has a distinctive criss-cross pattern on top. Furthermore, surely there’s a Sussex equivalent?
A quick Google lead me to Sussex heavies, aka (as I understand it) plum heavies. Which may once have been made with dried plums (prunes) but seem to have evolved into yet another variation the small curranty pastry-cake.
I’ve never seen these in a bakery, in Sussex or elsewhere. Maybe some places still make them, but I doubt it – a Google image search for “plum heavies” brought up one image when I wrote this, but that site has subsequently died. If they were more of them out there, I’m sure today’s baking enthusiast foodie bloggers would have posted more about them.
Pastry archaeology
So investigating them is a form of archaeology. Reading about them and planning a recipe is like an archaeologist looking at bones and fabric scraps and trying to envisage what the person must have looked like. You can’t ever be sure, and any idea that what I’m doing here is “authentic” is a bit silly.
It’s particularly tricky in this case as there seem to be various different interpretations. Such diversity is not unusual with any traditional recipe of course, but quite often, as with Eccles cakes, the simple fact of their popularity, and their larger-scale production, means they have become more standardised.
Elizabeth David’s ‘English Bread and Yeast Cookery’ put me on to another book called ‘Sussex Recipe Book, with a Few Excursions into Kent’ by MK Samuelson. Although originally published in 1937, I’ve acquired a 2005 reprint. It contains two different recipes, acquired from a pair of 1930s Sussex ladies, one for “Sussex plum heavies” and one for “Plum heavies”. The former is simply “dough”, lard, currants and brown sugar worked together and formed into buns. The latter is much more like a scone, with lard and butter rubbed into flour, with sugar and raisins added, and a dough formed with milk. They’re rolled, cut into rounds, brushed with milk and baked.
“You have got plum-heavies for tea”
Other information suggests heavies were snacks for outdoor workers like famers and shepherds, as well as for children. Recipewise says “they were also commonly given out at Halloween to trick or treaters”, but I’m dubious. Trick or treating wasn’t a widespread English activity before recent commercial cash-ins on the US tradition (though arguably that had its origins in Celtic culture).
Recipewise does quote another nice source though, an 1875 Lewes publication with the wonderfully Victorian title of ‘A dictionary of the Sussex dialect and collection of provincialisms in use in the county of Sussex’ by Rev.WD Parish, vicar of Selmeston, Sussex. The full text includes this definition of the plum heavy: “A small round cake made of pie-crust, with raisins or currants in it.” It also includes this anecdote: “Dr JC Sanger, of Seaford [Sussex], when Government Surgeon at the Cape of Good Hope, was sent for to see an English settler. Reaching the house at tea-time, he joined the family at their meal, and on sitting down to the table he said, ‘You come from Sussex.’ ‘ Yes,’ was the answer, ‘from Horse-mouncies (Hurstmonceux), but how did you know that?’ ‘Because you have got plum-heavies for tea,’ said the doctor, ‘which I never saw but when I have been visiting in Sussex.'” (p88).
Anyway, all sources online agree they were called heavies as they were dense concoctions made with plain flour, quite possibly in the form of leftover scraps of pastry. In some modern recipes they’re more like a scone, in others more like an Eccles cake, with the paste given extra flakiness by the use of lard – a key cooking fat in traditional English baked goods, despite how out of fashion it may be now. I found a few recipes that even involved some basic lamination. So that’s what I’ve based mine on. And I’ve used self-raising flour, to make them slightly less heavy heavies.
Recipe
225g self-raising flour
1/4 t salt
85g lard
85g butter [170g fat, total]
100g currants
50g soft brown sugar
100g milk, QB
Beaten egg to glaze
Method
1. Sift together the flour and salt.
2. Cut the fats into small pieces, or even grate it coarsely.
3. Rub 50g of the fat into the flour.
4. Add the currants and sugar and, using a palette knife, bring together with milk. Don’t pour all the milk in at once – use just enough to combine. What Italian recipes call QB, quanto basta, “how much is enough”.
5. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly. Like with pastry, if you overwork the dough, it’ll toughen up.
6. Form a rough slab and roll it out to form a rectangle about 30 by 12 cm.
7. Flake one-third of the remaining fat (40g) over the bottom two-thirds of the dough.
8. Fold the un-fatty top third down onto the fatty middle third, then fold the fatty bottom third up.
9. Rotate 90 degrees then roll out again to about the same size and repeat the process with another 40g of fat.
10. Give it one final fold in the same way with the last 40g of fat.
11. Wrap the dough in plastic and leave to rest in the fridge of about 45 minutes. More won’t hurt.
12. Preheat the oven to 200C (180C fan).
13. Roll out the dough about 6mm thick
14. Cut out 6.5cm rounds. (Or whatever size round cutter you have. This is all I could find. Lost loads of kitchen stuff in our double house move, including a large portion of Fran’s cookie cutter collection. *weep*.)
15. Place on baking sheets (greased or lined with parchment) and brush with beaten egg. Or milk, which is easier.
16. Gather the scraps and roll out again. Cut more rounds, until you’ve used all the dough.
17. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until a nice golden brown.
18. Cool on a wire rack.
This recipe, with a 6.5cm cutter, produced about 14 rounds, then another 8 or so from the scraps. The ones made from the scraps rerolled have a slightly different consistency. The first rolling retains the lamination, but recombining then re-rolling the scraps mean it will be shredded. These ones, however, are probably more like the historical Victorian Sussex heavies, simply made with pastry scraps, some fruit and a sprinkle of sugar. Both are yummy, short, flaky and not too sweet.
A very enjoyable bit of food archaeology. Now I just wish some 90-year-old Sussex native would see this and reply with a description of the real things they ate as kids.
* The April 2014 issue of ‘Great British Food’ magazine has this intriguing story: “It’s possible that the recipe for Banbury cakes was brought to England by crusaders in the 12th century – a similar type of cake is known to have existed in Syria at the time, and the soldiers would have been able to acquire dried fruit and spices at a reasonable prices.” It’s a credible theory, as Midle Eastern delights like baklava and ma’amoul are in the same broad family of sweet-pastries-filled-with-dried-fruits-and-nuts. As are fig rolls, an industrialised incarnations of an (ancient) Egyptian pastry.
Bread, Cakes And Ale 
Hi Dan,
Very interesting. I’m not from Sussex and definitely not 90. My mother used to make what she called “Fly Papers” from the rough puff pastry left over after making the Sunday lunch pie. I suspect this came from her mother’s repertoire. Granny was from Cheltenham, but her mother-in-law was from Shoreham Beach in Sussex. Could this be a connection? Anyway, the left-over rough puff pastry (which was made in a similar way with dotting with lard and roll into ‘thirds’) was simply dotted with currants, rolled out flat to ’embed’ the raisins, and then cut into diamond shapes with a misshapen triangle thing at each end, brushed with milk, a bit of caster sugar, and into the oven it went with the pie. We kids used to love the Fly Papers more than the pie and usually managed to ruin our appetites if we could sneak a few before lunch. Your Sussex heavies look like a more sophisticated and planned approach to something very similar. Cheers, Sarah
Hi Sarah – yes, interesting, that definitely sounds like a connection. I do think, like in Italy say, every village, and every family once had its own way of doing the basic everyday foods. So the fly papers sound like your family’s variation on the pastry-and-currants concoction.
Apparently Eccles cakes also have fly-related nicknames. And when I was a child we used the names “Flies’ graveyard” or “Squashed fly biscuits” for Garibaldi biscuits, which are, again, just another (commercial) variation the pastry-and-currants combo.
Would so love to see these published. The research is most interesting and detailed and they are the basis for a really interesting historical cookery book.
Lots of those out there already though Ma!
My M-i-L (and her mum) live in Seaford – I’ve tweeted her to ask if this is a familiar thing.
hope this works…
Thanks Matt. wonder what her approach was. More pastry or more scone?
Hi, I’ve just read your blog. We have been making Sussex Heavies for a couple of years now. It started off when we did an event on the America Ground in Hastings (close to USA Independence Day) and decided to tie in with the Tom Paine connection (he worked in Lewes for a while). As we are a vegan bakery we use white vegetable fat instead of lard and soya milk in lieu of cow juice.
Whilst doing the research I came to the conclusion that this was a Sussex variation of the lard cakes that are to be found across the country. There is another recipe, for Sussex Lardy Johns, which uses less flour and no milk.
We have developed vegan variations for other local recipes – Banoffi pie, Sussex Black, Chiddingly Hotpot, Sussex Pond Pudding and are looking at others.
Trick or treat is an americanism, which evolved from European traditions and these involved adults. In England, men would black up and demand things. It had pretty much died out in England by the last century. In Sussex we have Bonfire and it may be that troublesome Bonfire Boyes (again blacked up or dressed to hide their identity) were appeased by the offer of heavies.
I’m still scratching my head about this one – still reading various recipes, and I get the impression Lardy Johns are more like a lardy cake, ie spongier, whereas heavies are either more like a sweet pastry or more like a scone.
Will have to visit 1066 Cakestand when we visit Hastings and check out your viersions Kevin.
Struggle with the vegetable fat vs lard question for both taste and ethical issues. Is it possible to get non-hydrogenated, non-palm oil veg fat? Or at least if it is palm oil, palm oil from plantations not on former rainforest land? Ideally I’d have a local, free-range organic lard or a non-hydrogenated veg fat made from local, organically grown crops. Is any veg shortening made from rapeseed oil for example? It’s quite hard to get straight answers about this issue. The makers of Trex, Cookeen and whatnot don’t seem to want to reveal the full story of their product, which always makes me suspicious.
The thing about palm oil is- it is an ethical issue, but is only one of several rain forest crops we commenly use- including soya (most of which goes to animal feed) & cocoa. Fair trade alternatives are available, and Traidcraft are making some tracks into fairtrade palm oil production. Coconut fat, another hard at room temperature fat, may be used as a palm alternative- but of course, is another rainforest crop.
It’s not easy for the consumer though as the information is rarely readily available. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Fairtrade vegetable shortening product, for example, and when “Palm oil” is listed in a product’s ingredients it’s extremely unlikely that any information about its provenance will be included.
Certain rainforest crops can be cultivated without the complete clearance and burning of virgin forest – cacao and Brazil nuts, for example. Unfortunately, the industrialsied food production process is monstrously blunt and tends to go for the full clearance option for crops like soya (for CAFO cattle feed often) and palm oil. But as you say Shelley, at least there’s a precedent for ethical (or at least less unethical) crops from these environments.
Just to note, rather late in the day, that for centuries small cakes were given out on All Souls’ Eve (=Halloween). These were known as “soul cakes” and googling the term will give dozens of references. So the argument that plum heavies can’t have been given out at Halloween, because trick-or-treating hadn’t been invented yet, is erroneous. In fact that’s a nice find of exactly what went into some soul cakes, which are often described in form but not in contents.
Yes, I’ve heard of soul cakes. I think the point I was making is that kids weren’t called “trick or treaters” in that era in England, not that cakes weren’t given out at Halloween. Wrote this a while ago though!
Pingback: Clotted Cream Heavy Cake – Matthew's Been Baking