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Ash Wednesday Food / Cocheals

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Well, I guess this could have gone on the end of the shrove tuesday thread, but that's got a bit long now.

Has anyone heard of 'cocheals'? They're little biscuity cakes, and according to my mother, they're traditionally eaten on Ash Wednesday, in Norfolk. I'm a bit suspicious of this, though, as she doesn't know where she heard of them, and the recipe includes lard (surely that would be used up on shrove tuesday?)

The penguin companion to food (the fount of all food knowledge) has nothing on them (at least not under any of the spellings I could think of).
 
slightly off topic but still regarding Ash Wednesday - a girl where I work has some ash on her forehead today - people keep commenting on it thinking that she's smeared some dirt on her forehead by accident. Is this common practice? I've never seen it before.
 
Beany-Can't say that I have. Of course pretzels are the "traditional" lenten starch.

pi23-Around here it is somewhat common at least among devout types. Limited to Anglican/Episcopal, Roman Catholic or Lutheran, I think. Not Baptists!, for example.

For a lenten thread from last year you can read this

And if anyone has any other info as to that topic (why does lent have forty days?), please lemme know.
 
Ash Wednesday

The ash is why its called Ash Wednesday. It the Catholic church, (don’t know about the CoE) there’s church service where the priest draws a little cross of ash (from burning the palms from the palm Sunday of the previous, year) on your forehead and muttering something like ‘..remember thou art but dust and unto dust you shall return..’ It’s a long time since I went so the details are fuzzy. It’s to mark the period of penance that is Lent, leading up to Easter.

I guess people who are dedicated Catholics still do it…I drifted off a long time ago.
 
The Catholic ash habit is alive and well. Whenever I have been teaching
in Catholic schools at this time of year, there is usually a notice to
read out about when and where they can get their fix.

The mark was made by a priest with his thumb so ends up as more
of a smudge than a cross. I noticed a few of the kids last year kept
the mark till about morning break - after that there were usually so
many other marks, it was hard to distinguish.

A few of the blighters announced that they were late for Registration
because they had been to the chapel. I saw no marks on their
foreheads but they certainly smelled of ash. :rolleyes:

I can't trace cocheals (cochilles?) in any of my recipe books, though the name
suggests they may have been shell-shaped and symbolic of pilgrimage?
Just a guess. :confused:
 
The burning of the palm crosses from the previous year and annointing people with the ash is a common practice in the Anglican church as well (or so my mother tells me, I don't remember it myself).

Lent is 40 days long, because that is how long Christ is supposed to have spent in the desert prior to his ride into Jerusalem. Why he was in the desert that long is not clear. I expect the number 40 has some significance, after all during the flood it rained for 40 days and 40 nights as well.

And I'm not familiar with cocheals either. Despite being raised in a reasonably devout (not fanatic) family.

Another question: Does anyone else remember the local church having a serialised story (of some religious bent) told by the vicar on Wednesday afternoons in Lent? They had a series of stamps that you got put in a little folder (to prove you'd been to each installment, or something), and were usually highly moralistic stories about young children facing great adversity and winning through by faith. They are a fond childhood memory, but I haven't heard of anyone doing it these days.
 
James Whitehead said:
I can't trace cocheals (cochilles?) in any of my recipe books, though the name
suggests they may have been shell-shaped and symbolic of pilgrimage?

Yes, that does sound possible... in the recipe I have, they are round, but as I said, I don't really know the origin of that recipe.

I made some last night, they were rather nice.
 
Well, I guess this could have gone on the end of the shrove tuesday thread, but that's got a bit long now.

Has anyone heard of 'cocheals'? They're little biscuity cakes, and according to my mother, they're traditionally eaten on Ash Wednesday, in Norfolk. I'm a bit suspicious of this, though, as she doesn't know where she heard of them, and the recipe includes lard (surely that would be used up on shrove tuesday?)

The penguin companion to food (the fount of all food knowledge) has nothing on them (at least not under any of the spellings I could think of).

My family have eaten Cocheals for more than 60 years. My mum use to make them and her grandmother passed the recipe down to her and then my mum passed it down to me and my brother and sisters. My mum also appeared in a national magazine like Woman with her recipe, but nobody I have spoken to outside my family knows about them.
 
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