by Kate McCarthy
It’s Easter and this morning my family enjoyed hot cross buns with lashings of precious butter and homemade Black Doris Plum jam - what a treat! It led me to ponder the origins of the hot cross bun and I made a couple of surprising discoveries. Before Christianity, the pagan Saxons marked bread buns they baked with a cross at the beginning of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre; to represent the rebirth of the world after winter and the four quarters of the moon, as well as the four seasons and the wheel of life. The pagan meaning, as with many other pre-Christian traditions, was replaced with a Christian one – the resurrection of Christ at Easter.
Flick forward in the history almanac to Tudor times and it was during the reign of Elizabeth I, that the London Clerk of Markets issued a decree forbidding the sale of spiced buns except at burials, at Christmas or on Good Friday. If you were found in breach of this decree the punishment was forfeiture of all the forbidden product to the poor resulting in hot cross buns being made mostly in home kitchens.
The first recorded reference to ‘hot’ cross buns was in ‘Poor Robin’s Almanac’ in the early 1700s: ‘Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.’ Food historian Ivan Day states, "The buns were made in London during the 18th century. But when you start looking for records or recipes earlier than that, you hit nothing.”
History of the hot cross bun goes into a story about a London East-End widow who hung buns from a beam for her sailor son who was supposed to come home from the sea on Good Friday. I don’t think he made it as when the widow died, the buns were found hanging from a beam in the cottage and the story has been kept alive by the pub landlords ever since a pub was built on the site in 1848. To this day, every Good Friday, the ceremony of the Widow’s Bun is celebrated and members of the Royal Navy come to The Widows Son pub to place a new hot cross bun into a net hung above the bar. Legend has it that the buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil.
Flick forward in the history almanac to Tudor times and it was during the reign of Elizabeth I, that the London Clerk of Markets issued a decree forbidding the sale of spiced buns except at burials, at Christmas or on Good Friday. If you were found in breach of this decree the punishment was forfeiture of all the forbidden product to the poor resulting in hot cross buns being made mostly in home kitchens.
The first recorded reference to ‘hot’ cross buns was in ‘Poor Robin’s Almanac’ in the early 1700s: ‘Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.’ Food historian Ivan Day states, "The buns were made in London during the 18th century. But when you start looking for records or recipes earlier than that, you hit nothing.”
History of the hot cross bun goes into a story about a London East-End widow who hung buns from a beam for her sailor son who was supposed to come home from the sea on Good Friday. I don’t think he made it as when the widow died, the buns were found hanging from a beam in the cottage and the story has been kept alive by the pub landlords ever since a pub was built on the site in 1848. To this day, every Good Friday, the ceremony of the Widow’s Bun is celebrated and members of the Royal Navy come to The Widows Son pub to place a new hot cross bun into a net hung above the bar. Legend has it that the buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil.
| For whatever reason or belief, if you choose to bake or eat a batch of hot cross buns this Good Friday, my advice is to enjoy them. |  |
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