National Hot Cross Buns Day

Five Food Finds about Hot Cross Buns

  • A hot cross bun is a spiced sweet bun made with currants or raisins and marked with a cross on the top, traditionally eaten on Good Friday.
  • In many historically Christian countries, buns are traditionally eaten hot or toasted on Good Friday, with the cross standing as a symbol of the Crucifixion.
  • They are believed by some to pre-date Christianity, although the first recorded use of the term “hot cross bun” was not until 1733.
  • It is believed that buns marked with a cross were eaten by Saxons in honour of the goddess Eostre (the cross is thought to have symbolised the four quarters of the moon); “Eostre” is probably the origin of the name “Easter”.
  • Others claim that the Greeks marked cakes with a cross, much earlier.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1721 Rudolph Jacob Camerarius died. A German botanist, he showed the existence of sexes in plants, and identified the stamen and pistil as the male and female organs.

1777 The Battle of Brandywine in the American Revolutionary War. The British win, enabling them to capture Philadelphia.

1851 Sylvester Graham died in Northampton, Massachusetts. He advocated vegetarianism, temperance and the use of coarse ground whole wheat (graham) flour. He developed the Graham cracker in 1829.

1959 Congress passed legislation creating the Food Stamp program.

1961 The World Wildlife Fund, a  conservation organization, was founded.