Gateau

Not all gâteaux are sweet. At least, not to start with.

Originally, ‘gâteau’ was the kind of food you’d bring out on feast days: round, rustic, and baked with the best flour. Think fine bread, not cake.

In Anglo-Norman it became ‘wastel’ — a name for manchet, the highest grade of medieval bread.

Its roots are probably Frankish, part of a wider Germanic family of words for shaped or fancy bread. Some even connect it to Latin ‘vas’ — meaning container — as if it were a loaf in a mould.

The cake part only arrived much later. Once sugar and butter became common, the gâteau evolved — from celebration bread to layered sponge.