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"At one time simnel cakes were made with yeast-leavened dough and baked wit=
h
a layer of almond paste in the center of the cake.  The dough was spiced an=
d
enriched with eggs, butter and dried fruit, so that the old simnel cake was
another variation of spice cake rather like the one described in the
Countess of Kent's recipe on p. 475

"Simnel cakes made on a basis of yeast dough were gradually superseded by
ordinary cake batters, and the strip of almond paste or marzipan moved from
the centre to the top of the cake, which was originally made for Mothering
Sunday.  Nowadays it has become associated with Easter."

In a related chapter, the following quote.

"The most interesting of the recipes is perhaps the simple spiced fruit bun=
,
the original of our Good Friday hot cross bun without the cross.  These
spice buns first became popular in Tudor days, at the same period as the
larger spice loaves or cakes, and were no doubt usually made from the same
batch of spiced and butter-enriched fruit dough.  For a long time bakers
were permitted to offer these breads and buns for sale only on special
occaisons, as is shown by the following decree issued in 1592, the
thirty-sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth I, by the London Clerk of
Markets:

"'That no bakers, etc, at any time or times hereafter make, utter, or sell
by retail, within or without their houses, unto any of the Queen's subjects
any spice cakes, buns, biscuits or other spice bread (being bread out of
size and not by law allowed) except it be at burials, or on the Friday
before Easter, or at Christmas, upon pain of forfeiture of all such spiced
bread to the poor.'"  (Stow's Survey of London, 1598 ed., ed. John Strype,
1720, Vol. 2, ch xxiv, p. 441)

So, by the Elizabethean period, simnel was a spice bread.  It may or may no=
t
have been a spice bread when the Assize of Bread was written.  Since the
name is derived from the Latin "simila" meaning "fine flour," it is possibl=
e
that simnel was a fine, white, enriched bread (similar to the German
"semmel") that evolved into spice bread then, modernly, into a "biscuit",
similar to the evolution which occurred in restons.

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