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If you think celebrity wedding cakes are dramatic, Queen Victoria’s wedding cake will leave you flabbergasted! The 300-pound wedding cake of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert didn’t just break royal protocol in more ways than one, but the tiered cake also served as a major influence on how wedding cakes came to be perceived.
Queen Victoria married Prince Albert on February 10, 1840, at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, London. Their cake, made by Queen Victoria’s confectioner at Buckingham Palace, John Mauditt, was a visual spectacle. Traditionally, wedding cakes in Britain were not the grand, tiered confections we associate with weddings today.
Instead, they were often simple fruitcakes, sometimes adorned with minimal icing or marzipan. Queen Victoria's wedding cake, however, outsized these traditional dimensions. Her 300-pound (roughly 140 kg) wedding cake was a three-tiered English plum cake that stood 14 inches tall and measured nearly 10 feet in width.
Queen Victoria's choice of a white, tiered, and elaborately decorated wedding cake had a profound influence on subsequent wedding celebrations. Here are some ways in which her wedding cake changed wedding cake traditions forever.
History & Pastry
Queen Victoria's cake was unique due to its height, a departure from the prevailing tradition of one-layer English cakes during that era. Many food historians believed that Queen Victoria aimed for a cake that showcased a French influence, which was gaining popularity in England. The concept of tall cakes can be traced back to pre-revolutionary France, where chefs started emphasizing ornate and vertical cakes.
According to historical data, following the revolution, several skilled confectioners and pastry chefs migrated from France to England and were hired in the homes of the British upper classes who appreciated them for their skills. Queen Victoria's cake was covered in white icing, another departure from tradition since royal wedding cakes and almost all wedding cakes in Britain used darker icing.
Refined white sugar was used to make the icing which covered the entirety of the cake. Interestingly, refined white sugar was very expensive in the 1840s which made the large cake all the more iconic. Like most royal cakes, the Queen’s cake retained the tradition of using fruitcake as the base. Fruitcakes, with their dense texture and long shelf life, were considered ideal for elaborate ceremonies since they could be prepared in advance.
By the late 19th century, sugar prices had come down and tiered cakes with royal icing were recreated in middle-class weddings as well. The term ‘royal icing’ is known to have referred directly to Victoria’s wedding cake.
Cutting the Cake Tradition
Did you know that before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding, there was no real documentation of royal couples in Britain cutting their wedding cakes together? This symbolic act became the talk of Britain after the wedding since a couple's joint participation in cutting the cake symbolised their partnership in marriage.
While Victoria and Albert may not have been the absolute originators of this practice, their wedding had a profound influence on wedding traditions in Western culture. The image of a tiered, white wedding cake and the ceremonial act of the married couple cutting it became deeply ingrained in wedding celebrations
