Wedding Cakes and Cultural History

The question of food is a growing interest in anthropology. Levi-Strauss made the famous distinction between the raw and the cooked and this ushered in the so-called 'structuralist revolution', the effects of which are still being felt within the subject. The wedding cake, whether 'traditional' or in new styles is no ordinary object. At once familiar in form, tradition and ceremony, it presents a fascination and a range of problems which anthropologists are only just beginning to work on. It is a product of a complex, contingent and continuing history, which illustrates and challenges theories of 'structuralism' and 'neo-structuralism'.