Dundee Cake: Almonds, Fruit and a Royal Legend

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Keiller's role in popularising Dundee cake is well attested. Exactly when and by whom the cake was first made is not documented, and the Mary Queen of Scots story is legend.

Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014) has a short entry on Dundee cake by Laura Mason, co-author with Catherine Brown of Traditional Foods of Britain (1999). It is useful on the date of the name and on the trade history, but its account of the marmalade link is attributed to "sources in the city of Dundee", which is local tradition rather than documentary proof. Its dating of Keiller's absorption into a multinational to the 1970s does not match the firm's ownership record and is treated with caution below.

The cake

established Dundee cake is a buttery fruit cake made with currants, sultanas, raisins and candied orange peel, often with ground almonds, orange zest and sometimes a splash of whisky. Its top is decorated with whole blanched almonds arranged in circles before baking, which toast golden in the oven. It is lighter than a Christmas cake and traditionally contains no glacé cherries.

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929; revised 1963), gives an "Old Family Recipe" that matches this description closely. It is a butter-and-sugar creamed cake with six eggs, equal parts currants, sultanas and seeded raisins, candied peel, ground almonds and orange or lemon zest, with split Jordan almonds strewn over the top and a long, slow bake of about three hours. Her optional spirit is sherry, brandy or rum, not whisky; the whisky in many modern versions is a later touch. She does not mention cherries, Mary Queen of Scots or Keiller's in connection with the cake.

established McNeill places the cake on the Scottish farmhouse tea-table, among oatcakes, scones, sponges and shortbread, as "its rich almond-studded fruit cake (known to the world as Dundee)". The phrase suggests that by her time the name had travelled further than the cake's local reputation.

established The food historian Annette Hope, in A Caledonian Feast (1987), gives a plainer version: half a pound each of butter, sugar, currants, raisins, sultanas and plain flour, four eggs and two ounces of candied peel, with two ounces of blanched almonds set in a pattern on top, baked for hours in a very slow oven. It has no cherries, ground almonds, zest or spirit. Hope recommends it as a lighter alternative to Christmas cake and is firm on one point: "Do not omit the almond decoration on top – if you do, you have not made a Dundee cake." That matches Laura Mason's observation, below, that bakers outside Scotland came to treat the almonds as the cake's one defining feature.

Keiller's

established Keiller's, the Dundee marmalade firm, began producing Dundee cake commercially in the nineteenth century, and its tinned cakes were exported widely. The firm's association with the cake made Dundee the name attached to it.

shared It is often said that the firm used the candied orange peel produced in marmalade-making in its cakes during the winter months, when marmalade production was seasonal. The link is plausible but not firmly documented.

shared The marmalade side of the story has its own uncertain dates. Annette Hope credits Janet Keiller with the inspiration for orange marmalade and asks whether she made it in 1770, while the family firm is usually dated from 1797. Hope also notes, citing the American food writer Waverley Root, that the marmalades in a British cookbook of 1669 were mostly made with quinces, the Portuguese marmelo, and none with oranges. Neither point dates the cake, which is first named only in the late nineteenth century.

shared The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) gives the same account, attributed to "sources in the city of Dundee": the cake began as a by-product of Keiller's orange marmalade, made in the part of the year when the firm was not making marmalade and may well have had peel to spare. The Companion presents this as the local explanation, not as a documented fact.

shared Laura Mason, writing in the Companion, adds a striking detail. Bakers in Dundee, she says, had a gentleman's agreement that only Keiller's should make Dundee cake, and this held until the company became part of a multinational, which she places in the 1970s. The agreement did not extend beyond the city, and the cake was widely copied elsewhere in Britain in the 20th century. Her date is hard to square with the firm's history. Keiller's merged with Crosse & Blackwell and Lazenby's in 1919, by Carol Foreman's account (Grace's Guide gives 1920), and Crosse & Blackwell took full control in 1922. Crosse & Blackwell was bought by Nestlé in 1960. The agreement itself is reported only by Mason, and its exact end date should be treated as uncertain.

established Mason also notes a confusion that explains many modern versions. Bakers further south mixed up Dundee cake with the rich fruit cakes of England and tended to think that the almond topping was the only thing that set it apart. Cakes sold as Dundee with cherries, mixed spice or a dark, heavy crumb are the result.

A medium-weight fruit cake

established The Companion's description is brief: a rich, buttery Scottish fruit cake containing sultanas, ground almonds and candied peel, its top covered with whole blanched almonds before baking. Its fruit list is shorter than McNeill's, which also has currants and raisins. Recipes have always varied, and both versions fit the pattern of a lighter, buttery cake with peel and almonds.

established In its entry on fruit cake, also signed by Laura Mason, the Companion places Dundee cake as "a medium-weight species of fruit cake". At one end of the range are the dense celebration cakes for weddings and Christmas, often holding up to half their weight in dried fruit and finished with marzipan and royal icing, a formula the Companion credits to the Manchester cookery writer Elizabeth Raffald. At the other are light tea-time cakes such as Genoa cake. Dundee cake sits between them, rich enough to keep but eaten plain at tea.

established Mason also gives the deeper history. Dried fruits only began to reach Britain from Portugal and the eastern Mediterranean in the 13th century, and lightly fruited breads were probably more common than true fruit cakes in the Middle Ages. In the 18th century "plumb cakes", in which "plum" meant any dried fruit, were raised with yeast and descended from enriched breads. By the mid-18th century eggs had largely replaced yeast, and by the late 19th century baking powder had replaced it entirely. Dundee cake, first named in that late period, is a creamed, egg-raised cake of the modern type. The older yeasted line survives in Scotland in the Selkirk bannock, and the Companion traces Scottish black bun, a dense fruit cake in pastry, to the late Middle Ages.

The royal legend

traditional A widely repeated legend says the cake was first made for Mary Queen of Scots, who did not like glacé cherries, so almonds were used instead. There is no evidence for this, and it seems to have been invented much later.

Protecting the name

shared In the 2010s a group of Dundee bakers sought protected geographical status for Dundee cake, arguing that cakes made elsewhere, often with cherries, misused the name. The application has not resulted in protected status, and cakes sold as Dundee cake are made in many places.

• Dundee cake is topped with whole blanched almonds.
• Traditional Dundee cake contains no glacé cherries.
• Keiller's, the marmalade firm, made it famous.
• The Mary Queen of Scots story is a legend.
• Bakers have campaigned to protect the name.
• In older English, "plum" cake meant a cake with any kind of dried fruit, not plums.
• According to Laura Mason, Dundee's own bakers once left the cake to Keiller's by gentleman's agreement.
• Bakers outside Scotland often assumed that the almond top was the only thing that made a cake a Dundee.

• Myth: Dundee cake was first made for Mary Queen of Scots, who disliked glacé cherries. There is no evidence for this, and the legend seems to have been invented much later. McNeill's recipe does not mention it.
• Myth: The name "Dundee cake" is legally protected. Dundee bakers sought protected geographical status in the 2010s, but the application has not resulted in protected status, and cakes sold as Dundee cake are made in many places.
• Disputed: Whether the cake began as a by-product of Keiller's marmalade. It is often said that Keiller's used peel left over from marmalade-making. The link is plausible but not firmly documented, and The Oxford Companion to Food attributes it to "sources in the city of Dundee", which is local tradition.
• Disputed: When Keiller's lost its independence. Laura Mason places the end of the Dundee bakers' gentleman's agreement, under which only Keiller's made the cake, in the 1970s. That does not match the firm's record, which shows a merger with Crosse & Blackwell in 1919–22 and a takeover by Nestlé in 1960. The agreement is reported only by Mason.
• Disputed: When Janet Keiller first made marmalade. Annette Hope asks whether it was 1770, but the family firm is usually dated from 1797.