After Hallowe’en: All Saints, All Souls & the Tradition of Soul Cakes

A journey through Allhallowtide, forgotten customs, and the quiet traditions of remembrance.

There is a particular quiet that settles over the morning after Halloween.

The costumes have been put away. The last candles have burned low. Perhaps a pumpkin still sits upon the doorstep, its cheerful expression looking rather different in the pale November light.

And yet, for much of Halloween’s history, the turning of the calendar from October 31 to November 1 did not mean that the observance was over.

In many Christian traditions, it meant that the central days of remembrance had only just begun.

The three days—All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day—became known collectively as Allhallowtide.

And within their history we find church bells, candlelight, prayers, visits to graves, and a curious little cake once carried from door to door.

November 1: The Feast of All Saints

The word Hallowe’en is itself a reminder of the holiday’s place in the calendar.

It is a shortened form of All Hallows’ Even, or the evening before All Hallows’ Day. Hallow was an older English word for a holy person or saint.

All Saints’ Day, observed in Western Christianity on November 1, commemorates the saints, including those whose names and stories have not been individually preserved.

The feast has a long history, although its development was gradual. Earlier Christian commemorations of martyrs and saints were observed on different dates. The November observance became established in the Western Church over time, particularly during the early medieval period.

For generations, the occasion was marked by religious services and remembrance. In some communities, bells were rung and candles were lit, while the ordinary rhythms of work and household life gave way to the observance of the feast.

To understand the Halloween celebrations of centuries past, it helps to remember that the evening’s entertainments existed alongside this religious calendar.

Fortune-telling games, gatherings, disguises, and seasonal customs did not necessarily carry the same meaning as the church observances. Their histories overlap, but they are not interchangeable.

And although we tend to think of Halloween as the conclusion of October’s festivities, the older calendar reminds us that it was also an eve—a threshold between one observance and the next.

November 2: Remembering the Departed

The following day, November 2, is All Souls’ Day in the Western Catholic calendar—a day particularly associated with prayer for the faithful departed.

Its medieval development is often connected with the Benedictine monastery of Cluny and Abbot Odilo, who promoted an annual commemoration of the departed around the end of the tenth century.

The observance spread beyond the monastery and became part of the wider religious life of medieval Western Europe.

In medieval Catholic belief, prayers offered by the living could assist the souls of the departed undergoing purification. Charity and remembrance were therefore closely connected.

This helps explain a custom that might otherwise seem rather curious to modern readers: giving food to someone in exchange for prayers.

The food was not simply a festive treat. Within its original religious setting, the act could carry spiritual meaning for both the giver and the recipient.

Over time, local customs developed around the occasion.

Families visited burial places. Candles and prayers accompanied remembrance. In different regions, food, charitable giving, and household traditions became associated with the season.

Not all these customs were universal, and many changed considerably from one century or community to another.

But they shared a familiar human impulse: to remember those who were no longer present at the family table.

And that brings us to the kitchen.

The Curious Custom of Souling

Among the traditions associated with the days around All Saints and All Souls was a practice known as souling.

In parts of England, visitors—sometimes children, sometimes poorer members of the community—went from house to house requesting food or small gifts.

In some accounts, the visitors offered prayers for the dead in exchange.

The foods associated with the custom included small cakes known as soul cakes.

And here, happily, the historical record gives us something more substantial than legend.

A Shropshire Churchman Remembers

Around the beginning of the fifteenth century, John Mirk, a churchman associated with Lilleshall Abbey in Shropshire, referred to an already-established custom of baking bread and distributing it for the remembrance of Christian souls.

Mirk’s words are particularly interesting because he presented the practice as something inherited from earlier times.

We cannot use that observation to assign the custom an exact beginning. But it does tell us that the association between baked goods, charitable giving, and remembrance was known in late medieval England.

And it reminds us that traditions do not always enter the historical record at the moment they begin.

Sometimes, by the time someone thinks to write them down, they are already old.

A Table Piled High with Soul Cakes

Now let us move forward to the seventeenth century.

The English antiquary John Aubrey recorded a custom in Shropshire in which a large heap of soul cakes was placed upon a table on All Souls’ Day.

Visitors could take a cake, accompanied by a short traditional verse asking mercy for Christian souls.

It is a wonderful domestic detail.

One can almost picture the household preparing for the occasion: cakes baked in advance, arranged upon the table, and offered to those who came through the door.

Of course, Aubrey’s account describes a particular regional practice. It should not be taken as proof that every English household observed All Souls in the same fashion.

Nevertheless, it allows us to see how remembrance could become part of ordinary hospitality.

The table itself became a place where the custom was carried forward.

What Did a Soul Cake Look Like?

This is where the historical cook must proceed with a little caution.

We often encounter modern recipes for soul cakes: small, round biscuits scented with cinnamon or nutmeg, perhaps containing currants or raisins, and sometimes marked with a cross.

Such recipes can be delightful.

But there was no single soul-cake recipe followed throughout England for hundreds of years.

Some historical descriptions refer to oat cakes. Others suggest sweetened, spiced cakes made with wheat flour.

And then there is a particularly intriguing household manuscript.

A Recipe from Elinor Fettiplace’s Household Book

Around 1604, Elinor Fettiplace compiled a household book containing recipes from an English domestic kitchen.

Among the recipes discussed by researchers in connection with the history of souling is one calling for flour, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, mace, butter, sack—a fortified wine—and ale barm, the frothy yeast-rich substance used in brewing.

The recipe also allows for saffron or fruit.

What makes it especially interesting is what it does not tell us.

There are no precise modern measurements, and the instructions leave uncertainty about the finished texture.

Was the result closer to a little bun? A rich cake? Something firmer?

We cannot say with certainty.

Nor should we assume that this one recipe represents every soul cake baked in earlier centuries.

But it opens a fascinating window into the ingredients and techniques available in an early seventeenth-century household.

And for anyone who loves old cookbooks, there is something irresistible about a recipe that has survived for more than four hundred years, still inviting us to wonder how it tasted.

The Souling Songs

By the nineteenth century, accounts of souling frequently described children or groups of visitors going from house to house singing or reciting verses.

In 1886, The Folk-Lore Journal recorded souling songs associated with Staffordshire, Cheshire, and northern Shropshire.

Its account described visitors asking not only for cakes but also for apples or ale.

Some of the verses were playful, asking householders for food or a coin, while retaining traces of the older association with All Souls.

The songs reveal something important about the way customs change.

A practice once strongly connected with prayer for the dead could survive in forms that were increasingly social, musical, or festive.

The visitors still approached the door.

The household still offered something.

But the meanings attached to the exchange could differ greatly from those of earlier generations.

This is one reason we should resist describing souling as the single origin of modern trick-or-treating.

The resemblance is certainly striking, and historians have identified souling as one possible predecessor.

Yet modern Halloween visiting customs also developed through guising, seasonal festivities, and changing traditions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The history is not one straight road.

It is a collection of paths that sometimes cross.

When the Old Customs Began to Fade

By the nineteenth century, writers and collectors of folklore were already recording older Halloween and All Souls traditions as customs that had changed or disappeared in some places.

Others remained alive, though sometimes in altered forms.

The growing interest in antiquarian research and folklore meant that practices once passed from one generation to the next were increasingly preserved in printed accounts.

And in some places, souling lasted remarkably late.

An account preserved in Memorials of Old Cheshire describes a woman near Hodnet in Shropshire who continued having soul cakes prepared for visiting children until her death in 1884.

The cakes were described as flat, sometimes round or oval, and made from a light, sweetened, spiced dough.

There is something rather touching about that detail.

Long after the custom had begun to decline elsewhere, one household was still keeping the practice alive.

Perhaps the children who came to her door thought chiefly of the cakes.

Perhaps the woman remembered the custom from her own childhood.

We cannot know her private thoughts.

But we do know that the tradition endured in that household.

And that is often how old customs survive—not through grand declarations, but because someone continues to do what was done before.

Of course, historical accounts require care. Folklore collectors sometimes romanticized the past, combined traditions from different regions, or described local practices as though they had been universal.

Nevertheless, their records allow us to glimpse a world in which the first days of November carried meanings that extended far beyond the festivities of Halloween night.

The past rarely offers us a single, tidy explanation.

Instead, it gives us layers—religious observances, local folklore, family customs, changing fashions, and the ordinary habits of people making their way through the year.

A Cake for the Season

Imagine a modest kitchen on an autumn evening in an earlier century.

The light is fading. A fire warms the room. On the table rests a batch of small cakes.

Outside, the lanes are damp with fallen leaves.

A knock comes at the door.

The visitor may have come to sing, to ask for a cake, or to offer a prayer, depending upon the place and period.

The exchange is simple, but the meanings surrounding it are not.

There is hospitality in the offering, charity in the giving, and remembrance in the occasion.

It is easy to understand why a tradition like this would find a lasting place in the imagination.

The little cake becomes more than something to eat.

It becomes part of a story about the living and the dead, about neighbors and households, and about the way communities marked the changing year.

The Quiet After Hallowe’en

Today, Halloween often ends when the last trick-or-treater has gone home.

But the older calendar invites us to linger a little longer.

November 1 and 2 remind us that the season has also been a time for remembrance.

For some, these remain days of religious observance. For others, they offer an opportunity to remember family, friends, and loved ones whose presence is missed.

And perhaps the kitchen is a fitting place for that remembrance.

Recipes have a curious way of keeping people close.

A familiar scent, a well-worn recipe card, or the simple act of preparing something once made by someone we loved can bring the past into the present with remarkable tenderness.

So, as the final October lanterns are extinguished and November settles around us, perhaps we might bake a small batch of spiced cakes, put the kettle on, and remember.

Not because we can recreate the past exactly as it was.

But because there are some traditions worth carrying forward.

And because, sometimes, the smallest offerings are the ones that mean the most.

From Life in Bianca’s Kitchen.

Home isn’t perfection. Home is making something good from what you have.

Companion reading: The Parlour Post, a publication of The Periodical Parlour.

Curious readings from centuries past.

Historical references for our WordPress source notes

These are the sources supporting our new archival additions, ready to incorporate into the article’s reference section:

English Heritage — What Are Soul Cakes and What’s Their Link with Halloween? — John Mirk, John Aubrey, and the wider history of souling.
Durham University — Soul Cake Bake — Elinor Fettiplace’s household recipe and early historical evidence.
The Folk-Lore Journal (1886), page 357 — nineteenth-century souling songs and visiting customs.
Memorials of Old Cheshire — accounts of soul cakes and their survival into the nineteenth century.