moon-cake

Noun

mooncake (plural mooncakes)

1. A rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
   • The fifteenth Day of the eighth Moon, is ſolemniz'd by the Chineſes with great feaſting and rejoycing. […] To this purpoſe, the preceding Days they ſend to one another Preſents of little Loaves and Sugar-Cakes, which they call Yue Pim, or Moon-Cakes. They are round, but the biggeſt, which are about...1688, Gabriel Magaillans [i.e., Gabriel de Magalhães], “Of Several Other Palaces, and Some Temples Erected within the Same Enclosures”, in [anonymous], transl., A New History of China, Containing a...