bastable cake

English

WOTD – 13 April 2020

Etymology

Irish soda bread, which would be called a bastable cake if baked in a bastable

From bastable (“earthenware or (later) cast-iron pot with three short legs and a lid, used for baking over a fire”) + cake.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbæstəbl ˌkeɪk/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbæstəb(ə)l ˌkeɪk/
• Hyphenation: ba‧sta‧ble cake

Noun

bastable cake (plural bastable cakes)

1. (Ireland) A round loaf of soda bread that is baked in a bastable (“an earthenware or cast-iron pot used for baking over a fire”).
   • 1929, Shaw Desmond, Tales of the Little Sisters of Saint Francis, London: Grant Richards & Humphrey Toulmin at the Cayme Press, →OCLC, page 297:

     Sister Cornelia was in the corner puffing and blowing like a porpoise as she made a new bastable cake, that she, bein' a County Waterford woman, like the "blower" itself, had introduced into them parts.

   • 1933 January 21, “Ballyvourney” [pseudonym], “Michileen: On ‘Shoneens’ and Their Select Dances”, in An Camán: The Organ of Irish Ireland‎^[1], volume II, number 3, Dublin: Cumann nGaedealac, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 February 2020, page 10, column 3:

     There was no show but the heap of sweet cake, not to mention all the shop bread, he brought from town. Bastable cakes would be too common for the likes of such a grand dance, a mhic ó! There was enough there to feed half the parish.

   • 1960 June 2, Martin John Corry, “Committee on Finance.—Vote 47—Office of the Minister for Industry and Commerce (Resumed).”, in Díosbóireachtaí Párlaiminte: Tuairisc Oifigiúil [Parliamentary Debates: Official Report] (Dáil Éireann)‎^[2], volume 182, number 5, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 February 2020, page 637, column 2:

     The fact is that we have in this country today such inept people that they are not able to do what their grandmothers did; they cannot turn out a decent cake or a decent loaf of bread from wheat grown in this country. Their grandmothers were able to do that. What is wrong with those charged with manufacturing wheat into flour and flour into bread? Have they been so spoilt by alien trends and so trained in foreign habits and foreign manners that they have completely forgotten how to bake the old bastable cake and the loaf that was good enough a generation ago for the people of Cork city and the people of Dublin city?

   • 1979, Karen Branson, Jane Sterrett, The Potato Eaters, New York, N.Y.: Putnam, →ISBN, page 34:

     A bastable cake! It was bread, really, but because it was baked in the three-legged iron pot, called a bastable oven, and because of its nice round shape, Ma called it bastable cake.

   • 1988, Tadhg Ó Buachalla, translated by Aindrias Ó Muimhneacháin, Stories from the Tailor, Cork, Munster: Mercier Press, →ISBN, page 38:

     On it, in front of the fire, would be placed the cake, and it would bake handsomely. However, the cake would have to be turned when one side was baked. That would be as good as any bastable cake.

   • 1988 May, Alice Taylor, To School through the Fields: An Irish Country Childhood, Dingle, County Kerry: Brandon, →ISBN; republished as “Old Bags”, in Quench the Lamp, Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2014, →ISBN:

     The Christmas pudding was boiled in it [a flour bag] and then wrapped in another, dry one for storage, and it was wrapped around the hot bastable cake to soften the crust.

   • 1994, Alice Taylor, “Bringing the Christmas”, in The Night Before Christmas, Dingle, County Kerry: Brandon, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: O’Brien Press, 2014, →ISBN:

     With each goose she placed a big brown bastable cake, and eventually everything, including my father's potatoes and turnips, was stored in the cart behind the jennet.

   • 2008, Jasper Ungoed-Thomas, Jasper Wolfe of Skibbereen, Wilton, Cork, Munster: Collins Press, →ISBN, page 127:

     He hadn't a pleasant time and was quite ill one day and couldn't eat anything – sodden bastable cake and smoky butter and tea was what he got in one house for breakfast and dinner.

Translations

round loaf of soda bread baked in a bastable

Further reading

• soda bread on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Terence Patrick Dolan, compiler (1998) “bastable”, in A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English, 2nd edition, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, →ISBN, page 17, column 2.