Kendal Mint Cake [Background]

Allegedly, Kendal Mint Cake was an accident. A local confectioner was making glacier mints. He spoiled the batch, but his mistake proved a sweet success.

According to one popular version of the story, Joseph Wiper, a Kendal confectioner, was making glacier mints in 1869. He let the sugar, syrup and water solution boil too long, however. The batch was spoiled, but Wiper persevered. He added peppermint oil to the mix, poured the lot into trays and let it set. The sweets Wiper eventually tipped out were not hard, but they were creamy and minty, and they did not taste half bad. Kendal Mint Cake had been born.[1]

At least that is how the story is often told, and it is a compelling tale. Still, it would be wrong to claim that Wiper was the first person to make mint cake. People were enjoying the stuff as early as the 1810s. James Taylor Staton, who was born in 1816, recalled having been ‘a true luver uv towfy, mintcake, ginscakes, un appo dumplins’ when he was a boy.[2] Staton might have been misremembering his youth. A more concrete proof comes by way of court records, including the case of three teenaged boys who confessed to stealing ‘a quantity of mint cakes’ from Sarah Astley’s sweetshop in Kendal in 1853.[3]

To be fair to Wiper, though, he and his family deserve a fair share of the credit for having forged the link between Kendal and its signature sweet. Their entrepreneurial spirit helped bring mint cake renown. Wiper’s great nephew, Robert, proved an especially important contributor to its fame. He was the one who supplied Sir Ernest Shackleton with mint cake for the Transantarctic expedition of 1914–17.[4]

The ingredients of mint cake, once combined, are as stable as they are simple. The grainy, creamy texture and refreshing flavour are not affected by freezing temperatures. Sir Christopher Bonington has confirmed that the stuff still tastes just as good at -30ºC.[5] Mint cake’s ability to withstand extreme conditions made it an ideal sugar-hit for Shackleton and his men, and the sweet has been linked with feats of endurance ever since.

By the 1920s, Wiper’s adverts boasted of the famous expeditions his mint cake had accompanied. Wiper was also quick to warn customers not to be misled by his competitors. ‘There are several local confections known as “Kendal Mint Cake”,’ we read, ‘and visitors are often misled, and buy any kind of Mint Cake under the assumption that it is the Original Confection which was supplied to The Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition 1914–1917.’[6] If you wanted to eat the mint cake of the brave and bold, then Wiper’s and only Wiper’s would do. 

For all that boasting, it was actually another Kendal confectioner, Romney’s, that really put mint cake on top of the world. Wiper’s mint cake had been taken on the Everest expeditions of 1922 and 1924, but it was Romney’s who provided the sweets that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay carried to the summit in 1953. The success of that ascent secured Kendal Mint Cake’s place in world history. What is more, it cemented the sweet’s connection with mountaineering. It has been faithfully carried by walkers, climbers and ramblers ever since.

Times have changed, of course. Fads for different sorts of outdoor gear have come and gone, but mint cake has remained much the same. It is still made in Kendal the way it was over 150 years ago, and three historic companies keep the tradition of this classic Cumbrian treat alive: Romney’s, Quiggin’s and Wilson’s, which is now part of Creative Confectionary. Mint cake aficionados claim that there are subtle differences between the three brands, and each brand produces different kinds of mint cake, including brown, white and chocolate covered.[7] Whichever one you choose, you will be in for a treat. For a minty pick-me-up out on the fells there is really nothing better.

Text by Christopher Donald

Illustration of Wiper’s advert courtesy of Christopher Donald

To find out more about the history of Kendal, click here 

https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/township/kendal-formerly-kirkby-kendal

For a full list of all interesting facts, click here

 https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/full-list-interesting-facts

[1] See indicatively the National Trust’s account in Gentleman’s Relish and Other English Culinary Oddities (London: National Trust, 2007), p. 40.

[2] J. T. Staton, Owd Wisdom’s Lankishire Awmenack for th’ Yer 1861 (Manchester: John Heywood, 1860), p. 8.

[3] See ‘Toffee and Temptation’, Westmorland Gazette, 30 August 1853, p. 5.

[4] Wiper’s Original Kendal Mint Cake Advertisement, c. 1925; see accompanying illustration.

[5] Michaela Robinson-Tate and Phil Rigby, Lake District Icons: People, Places and Things that Make Cumbria Great (Stroud: History Press, 2014), p. 49.

[6] Wiper’s Original Kendal Mint Cake Advertisement, c. 1925.

[7] Robinson-Tate and Rigby, Lake District Icons, p. 49.