bride-cake

bride-cake (countable and uncountable, plural bride-cakes)

1. Alternative form of bridecake.
   • 1648, Robert Herrick, “The Bride-Cake”, in Hesperides‎:

     THIS day my Julia thou must make
     For Mistresse Bride, the wedding Cake:
     Knead but the Dow, and it will be
     To paste of Almonds turn’d by thee:
     Or kisse it thou, but once, or twice,
     And for the Bride-Cake ther’l be Spice.

   • 1687–1689, John Aubrey, edited by James Britten, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, London: or the Folk-Lore Society by W. Satchell, Peyton, and Co., , published 1881, page 22:

     When I was a little boy (before the Civill warres) I have seen (according to the custome then) the Bride and Bride-groome kisse over the Bride-cakes at the Table: it was about the later end of dinner: and y^e cakes were layd one upon another, like the picture of the Sew-bread in y^e old Bibles.

   • 1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter XIII, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume I, London: Richard Bentley, , →OCLC, page 286:

     Smart bonnets and feathers were retreating as she entered the precincts of the house; and the footboy was retiring from the drawing-room with empty chocolate cups, and with mutilated bride-cake.

   • 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter III, in Middlemarch , volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 48:

     Mr Casaubon seemed even unconscious that trivialities existed, and never handed round that small-talk of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride-cake brought forth with an odour of cupboard.