Eccles cake
- noun
- /ˈɛkəlz keɪk/
- UK
:
pastel de Eccles
- The bakery offers a variety of treats, including Eccles cakes filled with currants.
Examples
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Packet of Eccles cakes, please.
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Next time I'll make Eccles cakes.
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Eccles cakes, yes.
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I had a delicious Eccles cake with my tea this afternoon.
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For dessert, I ordered an Eccles cake that was freshly baked that morning.
How Sweet
Surface Forms
Morphology
Eccles + cake
This is a place-name + noun compound (Eccles + cake), so a learner who knows both constituents will infer it denotes a type of cake associated with Eccles. The construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g. 'Napoleon', 'Boston cream'), so the basic meaning 'a kind of cake' is transparent even if specific ingredients (currants) are not predictable.
Etymology
Eccles cake was named after the town of Eccles, where bakers first sold the small, flat cakes filled with currants. So today the name means 'a small, round, flat cake made of flaky pastry filled with currants or other dried fruit'.