In Jane Austen’s time, cakes often had caraway seeds in them. So you can envision Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth having tea with pound cake, rout cakes or hot Bath cakes and being left with a caraway seed or two stuck between their teeth. Unless these seeds were sugar coated into candied caraway seeds! For this you had to dip the seeds several times in sugar syrup. In Holland we have our own version of the candied caraway. We call them ‘muisjes’ (little mice) because of the shape. Sometimes a little tail of the seed sticking out of the sugar coating also helped, I guess.

Actually it’s aniseed and not caraway seeds in our ‘muisjes’. Traditionally they are given to guests when a baby is born on a very light and crumbly toast called ‘beschuit’ . White and blue for boys and white and pink for girls if you want to stick even more with tradition. You can find them in every Dutch supermarket next to the jam and ‘hagelslag’ (chocolate sprinkles). Next mission: make some Bath cakes with the muisjes and imagine myself in Bath in Georgian times…I wonder if Mr. Darcy will be coming for tea?