On Chocolate Cake: Comfort, Culture, and a Slice of History

Chocolate cake feels simple. Innocent. Comforting.

But once you start paying attention, it carries far more history than we give it credit for.

January 27th is National Chocolate Cake Day, and in this first episode of Yumday (the podcast!), I follow my craving for chocolate cake — using this food holiday as a starting point to explore how one dessert came to hold so much cultural, emotional, and historical weight.

From colonial-era chocolate mills and mysterious disappearances, to 19th-century women who professionalized American baking, to boxed cake mixes and postwar marketing, this episode traces chocolate cake’s evolution from luxury and ritual to everyday celebration.

Along the way, I reflect on food holidays, memory, access, labor, and why chocolate cake—across cultures and continents—signals the same thing again and again:

This moment matters.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why food holidays exist—and why we crave them
• How chocolate was once a drink, not a dessert
• America’s first chocolate mill and the strange disappearance of John Hannon
• The first published chocolate cake recipe (1847) and the woman behind it
• How women like Eliza Leslie, Sarah Tyson Rorer, and Maria Parloa shaped American baking
• The rise of boxed cake mixes and the invention of “Betty Crocker”
• Chocolate cake traditions from Austria, Romania, Hawaii, Malaysia, Argentina, and beyond
• Cacao’s Indigenous roots in Central and South America
• How chocolate cake moved from sacred to celebratory—from luxury to everyday comfort

Whether baked from scratch, pulled from a box, or remembered from childhood, chocolate cake carries centuries of history in every slice.

So if you’re listening anywhere near January 27th, consider this your permission slip:

Go eat a piece of chocolate cake — and think about what it carries.

Sources & Further Reading

Food history — especially desserts and food holidays — rarely has a single, tidy origin story. For this episode, I drew from primary texts, museum archives, food historians, and reputable secondary references. Where histories conflict or remain unclear, I’ve chosen to name that ambiguity rather than smooth it over.

🍰 National Chocolate Cake Day & Food Holidays

These sources help contextualize modern food holidays and their cultural role rather than claiming definitive origins.

• National Day Calendar – National Chocolate Cake Day (January 27)
• Days of the Year – Chocolate Cake Day

📜 Early Chocolate in America

Chocolate existed in colonial America primarily as a drink. These sources document early chocolate mills, production methods, and trade.

• Baker Chocolate Company – Company History
• Smithsonian Magazine – A Brief History of Chocolate
• Colonial Williamsburg – Chocolate in the 18th Century
• Harvard Library – Chocolate History & Collections

🍫 Chocolate Cake & American Baking History

These sources trace chocolate’s transition from beverage to baked good, and the emergence of chocolate cake recipes.

• Eliza Leslie, The Lady’s Receipt Book (1847)
• Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery
• Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project (Michigan State University)
• Library of Congress – American Cookbooks Collection
• Food Timeline – Cakes
• The Dover Post – History of Chocolate Cake
• Wikipedia – Chocolate Cake (general overview; starting point only)

👩‍🍳 Women Who Shaped American Baking

These writers and educators helped professionalize American cooking and make chocolate cake accessible to home bakers.

• Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book
• Maria Parloa, Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book
• Schlesinger Library (Harvard) – Women & Food History
• Smithsonian National Museum of American History – Food & Women’s Labor

📦 Boxed Cake Mixes & 20th-Century Food Marketing

These sources document the rise of convenience foods, boxed cake mixes, and the creation of Betty Crocker.

• General Mills – Betty Crocker History
• Smithsonian Magazine – Why Cake Mix Became an American Staple
• Food Timeline – Commercial Baking Mixes

🌍 Chocolate Cake Around the World

Examples of regional chocolate cake traditions referenced in the episode.

• Sachertorte – Hotel Sacher (Austria)
• Amandine Cake (Romania)
• Dobash Cake – Hawaiian Food History
• Batik Cake (Malaysia)
• Torta Bariloche (Argentina)

🌱 Cacao, Colonialism, & Indigenous Traditions

These sources center cacao’s Indigenous origins and the global systems that made modern chocolate possible.

• Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian – Chocolate & Cacao
• The British Museum – Chocolate in Mesoamerica
• Belize Cacao & Chocolate Festival
• Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power
• Coe, Sophie D. & Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate

I’ll continue updating these sources as the Yumday archive grows.