Hot Cross Buns: A Good Friday Tradition

Well it’s Good Friday, and it’s time for the mouth-watering taste of a hot cross bun, something Jane Austen would have eaten for breakfast on this very day.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go to the shops because of lockdown, so I can’t have any this year, and I couldn’t bake them because I’m short of flour. In this time of Coronavirus, getting the right ingredients for baking isn’t easy. I don’t know about you, but I’ve become obsessed with looking up recipes to make meals with the fewest ingredients. So I can just imagine the relief of all the cooks who, for much of earlier history, had to change their recipes in Lent to avoid using eggs. This was a long time before vegan substitutes, so that was a serious omission. What does puzzle me is that Lent is supposed to extend into Friday, so why were hot cross buns eaten on Good Friday? Perhaps this wasn’t the case in earlier periods, just as the eggs rule isn’t followed as strictly now.

But surprisingly, hot cross buns weren’t just tasty food to eat. The word ‘bun’ is said to be derived from the sacred bread offered at the Greek Arkite temples, which were called ‘boun’, and were available every seventh day. It’s thought that the Romans brought the tradition to England, and that it was used at altars to the god Mithras. It was eventually adopted into Christianity by replacing the traditional horns on the ‘bouns’ with the cross to symbolise the crucifixion. Other theories are that the cross on the buns was already used in pagan rituals involving either the goddess Diana, whose symbol was the quadra, representing the four quarters of the moon, or Eastre, the name of a goddess associated with spring, from whom we get the word Easter.

Whatever the origins, spiced or cross buns were firmly established as Christian in the medieval period, with the cross symbolizing crucifixion, and the spices representing the spices used to embalm Jesus for burial. Some of the superstitions associated with the buns persisted, however, including their ability to heal wounds and to ward off spirits and fires. These beliefs were so prevalent that Queen Elizabeth I made it illegal in 1592 for anyone to sell the buns on any other occasion than funerals, Good Friday and Christmas. Eventually, they became associated with the end of Lent, and were eaten for breakfast on Good Friday during the Regency and Victorian periods. The term ‘hot cross bun’ wasn’t entered in the Oxford Dictionary until 1733, since the bun was known by other names, including cross bun, spiced bun and Good Friday bun.

The buns have continued to be imbued with special significance, however, as hot cross buns have been handed down through generations, often as a talisman of good luck.  Some buns were specially hard baked so they could last for a year until they are replaced,  but mostly, it’s the spices that are credited with preserving them. There are several records of people still possessing one. One has been kept for 107 years in memory of a teenager, Ada, who died at age 13. The world’s oldest existing hot cross bun was baked in 1807, which puts it right into Jane Austen’s time.  It originally belonged to a wealthy physician by the name of Edward Holdich, and was  handed down by the family and then left in a will to an unrelated beneficiary in Essex in 2014. It’s still wrapped in the original paper bag that was used when he bought it from a baker in Weir Street, Colchester, with the address inscribed by quill. I hope he bought more of the buns and had the chance to eat one!

There is one more superstition that was apparently common in the 19th century. I wonder if it already existed during Jane Austen’s time or if it came later.  As you can see below, the hot cross bun was a recipe for marriage (pun very much intended).

‘The Illustrated London Magazine’: Published 1855

Young ladies are fond of preserving hot-cross buns. They puncture the date on its back with pins, and put it away, like a bag of lavender, in their drawers. “Whoever keeps one of these mealy treasures for an entire twelvemonth is sure, it is said, to get married the next”; and yet we have known many a young lady, with a small pyramid of these buns, grown harder even than man’s inconstancy, condemned to walk about with her finger still unfettered with a gold ring. There must have been some perverse ingredient kneaded, or rather some good ingredient wanted, in the manufacture of these faithless buns.

Very unfortunate. 🙁

I thought I would leave you with a video from York Castle Museum that talks about the some of the history of the hot cross bun and shows how it was made during the Victorian period.