mooncake
/ˈmunkeɪk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.75 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
Example Sentences
- "The fifteenth Day of the eighth Moon, is ſolemniz'd by the Chineſes with great feaſting and rejoycing. […] To this purpoſe, the preceding Days they ſend to one another Preſents of little Loaves and Sugar-Cakes, which they call Yue Pim, or Moon-Cakes. They are round, but the biggeſt, which are about two hands breadth in diameter, and repreſent the Full Moon, have every one a Hare in the middle made of a Paſt of Walnuts, Almonds, Pine-Apple-Kernels and other Indgredients. Theſe they eat by the Light of the moon; the Richer ſort having their Muſick alſo playing about 'em, which is very good."
- "Mei-kwei 玫丨 [i.e., 玫瑰] name of a pearl; also of a round cake, called the moon-cake, eaten at the harvest moon; […]"
- "The 15th day of the 8th moon is the 中秋 mid autumn feast. […] The cake shops are cleared of other stock, and nothing is to be bought in them for many days but the moon cakes. The moon cake—I am afraid I cannot convey an idea in words, of the delicacy of this exquisite morceau. I merely give its composition, and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader. A small pie in shape of a pork pie, with a crust not quite so tough as well tanned leather, filled with lumps of pork fat mixed with sugar, almonds, chopped walnuts, sesamum, and other varieties of seed."
- "[M]aybe his mother has promised him a mango or a moon-cake if he would be good; […]"
- "The emblematical pastry of the period, the moon cake, has for its ingredients a little bit of everything grown during all the seasons of the year. […] Indeed, it is the nearest thing to pie the Chinese cookery affords. Bits of pork, cabbage, pumpkin, figs, fruit and fowl baked together in a cast-iron crust, seasoned with pork fat, may not be appetizing to the Caucasian taste, but they tickle the palate of a Chinaman into epicurean laughter and make him believe he is enlarging his mind proportionately with his waist."
- "The servants had already packed and loaded a rickshaw with the day's basic provisions: […] sweaty earthen jars of preserved meats and vegetables; stacks of red boxes lined with four mooncakes each; and of course, sleeping mats for our afternoon map."
Etymology
From moon + cake, a calque of Mandarin 月餅 /月饼 (yuèbíng, “mooncake”), from 月 (yuè, “moon”) + 餅 /饼 (bíng, “pastry; biscuit, cookie”), probably because the pastry’s traditional round shape resembles the full moon visible during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmunkeɪk/
- British English: /ˈmuːnkeɪk/