soul cake
soul cake noun: a cake seasoned with spices or raisins given to beggars on All Soul's Eve (Halloween).
Noun
soul cake (plural soul cakes)
- A cake seasoned with spices or raisins given to beggars on All Soul's Eve (Halloween).
- All Souls' Day was celebrated by souling, a custom going back to pre-Reformation days: soul cakers and mummers toured the village begging for a soul cake — a plain, round, flat cake seasoned with spices.1981, Geoffrey Scard, Squire and tenant: life in rural Cheshire, 1760-1900, page 93
- You tell them to say "A soul cake, a soul cake, I pray thee, good mistress, a soul cake", which is the old North Country refrain.1992, Joanna Bogle, A Book of Feasts and Seasons, →ISBN, page 174
Forms of soul cake
| plural | soul cakes |
|---|---|
| alternative form | soulcake |
| alternative form | soul-cake |
Origin of soul cake
Probably from Middle English sǒuel, souvel, suvel (“food eaten with bread; food in general”), from Old English sufel, sufol (“anything (especially relish) eaten with bread; sowl”), from Proto-Germanic *suflą (“entremets, viands”), from Proto-Indo-European *seu-, *sew- (“juice; moisture; rain”). + cake. The practice of begging for a soul cake is related to begging for condiments (sowl or soul) from wealthy neighbours, with a Christian re-interpretation.
Questions about soul cake
- What does soul cake mean?
- Soul cake means a cake seasoned with spices or raisins given to beggars on All Soul's Eve (Halloween).
- What part of speech is soul cake?
- Soul cake is a noun.
- What is the plural of soul cake?
- The plural of soul cake is soul cakes.
Words near soul cake in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: soul cake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “soul cake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/soul_cake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.