Custom
Simon and Nellie
Boil it or bake it? The row that invented a cake.
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- What's there
- Medieval graffiti on a church pillar
- Legend from
- Late 1300s
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Inside All Saints in Leighton Buzzard, scratched on a pillar, a medieval couple are still arguing about how to cook a cake.
Scratched into a pillar of All Saints Church, Leighton Buzzard, is a medieval drawing of a woman apparently hitting a man with a spoon, dated by their clothes to the late 1300s or early 1400s. Local tradition calls them Simon and Nellie. Short of food, Nellie mixed up the scraps in the cupboard. Simon said it should be boiled, as a pudding; Nellie said it should be baked, as a cake. After a furious row they did both, and so invented the Simnel cake, named from SIMon and NELlie. Some historians think the drawing really shows two musicians, one with a drum and one with bagpipes.