I've heard that when Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake," that cake
was actually bread, and now people are a bit non-plussed about her
statement.
Dee


"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
...
> at Tue, 11 Nov 2003 12:30:55 GMT in
> > ,
> (Ben) wrote :
>
> >Hi. My wife and I got into a discussion last night about the
> >difference between bread and cake. She's European and says 1/2 of the
> >stuff Americans call bread is cake (eg. Banana Bread). Is there a
> >definative difference between bread and cake like ingredients, baking,
> >etc?
>
> Like most non-technical words, there is at least some ambiguity. First, I
> will dismiss a few special cases.
>
> Preceded by "short-" both words change meaning from the standard.
> Shortbread is a type of cookie, shortcake is a type of scone. (Humorously,
> I have to resort to the American "cookie" and the British "scone" because
> in Britain, a cookie is called a biscuit, where in America, a scone is
> called a biscuit. So depending on one's POV, *both* shortbread and
> shortcake are "biscuits"!)
>
> "Cake" in a non-baking context can refer to any food that's been
compressed
> into a solid block, usually with one definitely smallest dimension. Thus
we
> have rice cakes, yeast cakes, etc.
>
> But generally, at least by my way of looking at it, the difference between
> bread and cake is that in cake, the amount of eggs is sufficient to
> contribute substantially to the *structure*, not just the *texture*. That,
> I realize, is a very vague point in itself, although in general cakes will
> be less dense than breads because once eggs start to have an impact on the
> structure, that impact is to make it lighter. In fact, a cake doesn't have
> to have any flour at all, thanks to the structure contribution of eggs,
for
> example flourless chocolate cake. However, a cake must have some other
> contributor to structure besides eggs, otherwise things like souffle would
> be a cake. It's all quite fuzzy and the boundaries overlap to some extent.
> But this is at least a close approximation to the way I see things being
> named.
>
>
> --
> Alex Rast
>
> (remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)