Was The Original Red Velvet Cake Created In New York City?

No Southern church cookbook is complete without Ms. Pearl's Famous Red Velvet Cake. Or her name may be Ms. Bessie, Mrs. Banks, or even just Grandma. In every town and community across the South, there exists the little lady who makes every church potluck complete with her version of the holiday-red cake with fluffy white frosting.

The red velvet cake is so ensconced in Southern culture these days you'd feel safe assuming the cake was born here, perhaps centuries ago, in the kitchen of a cook bent on making a recipe that would impress her family or neighbors. And you'd probably be wrong. Here is the actual origin story and history of the red velvet cake.

Who Created The Red Velvet Cake?

The red velvet cake is perhaps not very old and not too Southern. There is no written record of the cake, no lineage of who first dreamt it into existence, who first published it in a cookbook, and how it came to be so widely adored across all the states. But historians and intrepid food journalists have managed to piece together enough of an outline that we can safely say: We don't have any idea.

A Red Velvet Cake History Lesson

A velvet cake was a term used in the Victorian era to differentiate between cakes that were popular during that time. Sponge cakes and pound cakes, which happened to be relatively dense and chewy, are different than a type of cake created from almond flour, cocoa, or cornstarch, which lends the cake a soft, fluffy texture with fine crumbs.

During this era, cooks discovered that if you combined acidic ingredients like vinegar with non-Dutch processed cocoa (typically all that was available at the time), a cake would develop a faintly red hue.

A Hue Is Discovered

A mahogany cake, a lightly-flavored chocolate cake, used cocoa powder instead of chocolate. It developed a red-brown tint because of that exact chemical reaction between the cocoa and acidic ingredients. A cousin to the mahogany cake was a deep, chocolatey cake called devil's food cake. It used chocolate, however, so it was a deep brown color.

According to Serious Eats editor emeritus Stella Parks, during her appearance on The Splendid Table, a combination of devil's food cake and the mahogany cake was first published in 1911 as a recipe for a velvet cocoa cake.

WATCH: You Must Try This Red Velvet Ice-Cream Cake

So, Is Red Velvet Cake Southern?

As the cake recipe sifted through kitchens and cooks in the 1920s and 1930s, it picked up an iconic Southern ingredient, buttermilk, which amplified the cake's natural tanginess—and acidity. Combined with the cocoa that was available at the time, the cake had a remarkably red shade.

In the 1930s, the Waldorf-Astoria, a famed New York City hotel, began serving red velvet cake. The hotel receives credit for creating the cake, but as the research shows, they only capitalized on a cake already somewhat known throughout the country.

Red Velvet's Canadian Cousin

Around the same time of the Waldorf's inclusion of the cake on their menu, Eaton's department store in Toronto, a luxurious establishment by any measure, began selling red velvet cake. They, however, credited Lady Eaton as the creator.

These farther north, red-tinted velvet cakes would not likely resemble the vibrant red cakes we know and adore today. No. That color came only with artificial red food coloring, which became more widely available to home bakers in the pre-World War II era.

The U.S. South Brings The Red Velvet

The South plays a role in this story when Texan John A. Adams, a businessman who made his livelihood selling food-grade extracts and dyes, was looking for a product he could sell in World War II-era America when food rations limited options for many goods. Cocoa was scarce, which meant the natural red hue of the cake wasn't always possible. Cooks were turning to beet juice or pureed beets for color.

Sterling Crim, the managing partner and chief marketing officer for Adams Extract Company, told The New York Times in 2014 that John and his wife, Betty, first ate red velvet cake at the Waldorf-Astoria. Adams decided to capture the market—and perhaps secure his business a sustainable source of income—by creating a similar recipe that featured red food dye. The extract company's version of red velvet cake also included vanilla extract and butter flavoring, as war rations limited the butter people could get.

Red Velvet Cake in Southern Culture

Thanks to the Adams Extract Company, the recipe became mainstream, and the popularity of the cake remained consistent, if not lukewarm, in communities on every coast. In 1972, James Beard recounted that the cake was bland and uninteresting. Noted cake authority and baker Rose Levy Beranbaum didn't have a single recipe for red velvet cake in her cookbooks in the 1980s and early 1990s.

However, a cultural and Southern moment may have cemented the impression that red velvet cake was born of Southern foodways. That moment was 1989's Steel Magnolias. The red velvet armadillo cake brought the ruby red gateau roaring back to popularity. A few short years later, Magnolia Bakery opened in New York City's West Village, and red velvet cakes (and eventually cupcakes) were instant bestsellers.

The Red Velvet Cake Arrives

In the early 2000s, you couldn't pop into a bakery and not see a red velvet offering. In 2013, 4.1 percent of all items on restaurant menus were red velvet inspired, David Sprinkle, a research director at the publisher Packaged Facts, told NYT.

Then came the mid-2010s flood of all things red velvet: body mist, candles, perfumes, and even vodka. It took nearly a century, but red velvet has a magnificent place in the spotlight. Today, as home cooks and professional chefs are trying to veer away from artificial dyes and unnecessary ingredients, many are returning to that WWII hacks, beets, for natural red hues.

So while Southerners don't deserve the full credit for the cake's creation, we'll still have a slice. (It's an excellent slice of fun food history.)