I was looking through some old recipes I have and came across one for moggy, a curiously named Yorkshire cake cum biscuit; according to my notes, moggy comes from an old Norse word meaning a heap of corn… I discovered that there was an Old English word múga which meant exactly that, a heap of corn – corn wouldn’t be maize, it would be any grain… so maybe it’s so! Certainly this recipe is very, very old, and although syrup is used, I guess in the old days it would have been honey. I’ve looked up other recipes and they always include ginger, but the recipe I have makes no mention of it. This recipe is much less a cake, and more like a pastry or biscuit.
Moggy
- 1½ lb plain flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 6 oz lard
- 6 oz margarine
- 8 oz syrup (some recipes have a mixture of black and golden treacle)
- 8 oz sugar
- salt
- milk
- rub the fats into the flour, salt and baking powder as you would to make pastry
- add the sugar and syrup and mix to a stiff dough with milk
- shape into two pieces 1½ thick and put onto a well-greased baking tray
- bake for 25 mins at 180°C, 350°F, gas mark 4
- serve it with butter
Lois Elsden 
gee all that fat and sugar would keep you ploughing the field for days!
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It actually sounds disgusting… I’m not going to be trying this recipe but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that it has survived for so many centuries? There are ‘lighter’ versions with ginger which sound more like an ordinary ginger cake to me!
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