mooncake
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: From moon + cake, a calque of Mandarin 月餅 /月饼 (yuèbíng, “mooncake”), from 月 (yuè, “moon”) + 餅 /饼 (bíng, “pastry; biscuit, cookie”), probably because the pastry’s traditional round shape resembles the full moon visible during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Compound parts: moon
cake
Inflected forms:
form: mooncakes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: moon cake
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: moon-cake
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
pos: noun
examples: The fifteenth Day of the eighth Moon, is ſolemniz'd by the Chineſes with great feaſting and rejoycing. […] To this purpoſe, the preceding Days they ſend to one another Preſents of little Loaves and Sugar-Cakes, which they call Yue Pim, or Moon-Cakes. They are round, but the biggeſt, which are about two hands breadth in diameter, and repreſent the Full Moon, have every one a Hare in the middle made of a Paſt of Walnuts, Almonds, Pine-Apple-Kernels and other Indgredients. Theſe they eat by the Light of the moon; the Richer ſort having their Muſick alſo playing about 'em, which is very good.
Mei-kwei 玫丨 [i.e., 玫瑰] name of a pearl; also of a round cake, called the moon-cake, eaten at the harvest moon; […]
The 15th day of the 8th moon is the 中秋 mid autumn feast. […] The cake shops are cleared of other stock, and nothing is to be bought in them for many days but the moon cakes. The moon cake—I am afraid I cannot convey an idea in words, of the delicacy of this exquisite morceau. I merely give its composition, and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader. A small pie in shape of a pork pie, with a crust not quite so tough as well tanned leather, filled with lumps of pork fat mixed with sugar, almonds, chopped walnuts, sesamum, and other varieties of seed.
[M]aybe his mother has promised him a mango or a moon-cake if he would be good; […]
The emblematical pastry of the period, the moon cake, has for its ingredients a little bit of everything grown during all the seasons of the year. […] Indeed, it is the nearest thing to pie the Chinese cookery affords. Bits of pork, cabbage, pumpkin, figs, fruit and fowl baked together in a cast-iron crust, seasoned with pork fat, may not be appetizing to the Caucasian taste, but they tickle the palate of a Chinaman into epicurean laughter and make him believe he is enlarging his mind proportionately with his waist.
The servants had already packed and loaded a rickshaw with the day's basic provisions: […] sweaty earthen jars of preserved meats and vegetables; stacks of red boxes lined with four mooncakes each; and of course, sleeping mats for our afternoon map.
The round moon cakes, measuring about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness, resembled Western fruit cakes in taste and consistency. These cakes were made with melon seeds, lotus seeds, almonds, minced meats, bean paste, orange peels, and lard. A golden yolk from a salted duck egg was placed at the center of each cake, and the golden brown crust was decorated with symbols of the festival. Traditionally, thirteen moon cakes were piled into a pyramid to symbolize the thirteen moons of a "complete year"—that is, twelve moons plus one intercalary moon.
During the year we gathered together in the coolie room a few times to celebrate certain festive occasions, like the Ghost Month or the Mooncake Festival. If you had money to spare, you would buy some food, for example mooncakes to celebrate with your sisters.
[S]he just said, 'The mooncake, if don't eat, must throw away. But like that waste money, very gek sim.' I didn't want to hurt her heart, so I ate the cake. My mother watched me eat the mooncake. 'Do you like it?'
Fruit mince moon cakes […] Over the years, the Chinese moon cake has evolved into a variety of treats with different fillings. To cater to the health-conscious, many bakeries also offer miniature moon cakes and sugar-free moon cakes. I have used a fruit mince filling to make these moon cakes a little more familiar to the European palate, but you do need a moon cake mould to make these.
Remember the overthrow of the Manchus, when messages hidden in moon cakes roused the people to bring arms to the meeting place.
Tea and moon-cakes were served after dinner. The cakes came in square, octagonal and round shapes, each one about two inches thick and covered in a soft, brown skin. Emily cut them into quarter slices and handed them round.
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