Sheath Cake vs. Sheet Cake

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Katie and I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.

Oh, okay. Welcome, Katie.

Thank you. So my mom’s family is all from Texas and we have this cake that everyone makes all the time, holidays, birthdays, whatever, and it’s called a chocolate sheath cake and it’s spelled S-H-E-A-T-H. And we never thought anything of it. We just always called it the sheath cake. And then my sister is engaged to a guy who’s a chef, and he one day heard us talking about it, or we made it, and he said, I’ve never heard of a sheath cake. I think you guys are mispronouncing sheath cake, S-H-E-E-T.

Oh, I smell trouble.

So we have, you know, they’ve kind of been arguing about it, you know, playfully. And he, as far as I know, maintains that there’s no such thing as a sheath cake. So my mom did some digging, found out it came. She received a recipe as a wedding gift. And so it came from a cousin who got it from a cafeteria lady at a high school in the 60s. And we’re not sure where it came from other than that. And so now we’re starting to wonder, is it really sheet cake or is sheet cake something real that, you know, we’re actually spelling right?

Huh.

The argument is S-H-E-A-T-H versus S-H-E-E-T.

Correct.

What kind of cake are we talking about here?

It’s a chocolate cake. I mean, it is a sheet cake. It’s just a single layer made in a 9×13 pan. And it’s a chocolate cake, but it has a lot of spices in it, primarily cinnamon.

Pretty thin, though, right?

Usually just a couple inches high, it doesn’t rise much, kind of brownie or something.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it’s just like a regular cake that’s a regular sheet cake, but it has a lot of cinnamon in it, and it’s made with buttermilk. You would maintain that sheath, S-H-E-A-T-H, is the name of the cake, and he says no.

That’s correct.

One of my colleagues, Barry Poppick, lives in Austin, Texas now. He has noticed and recorded some evidence that shows that sheath cake is particularly more common as the way to describe this in Texas than it is anywhere else. I mean, it does occur in the south and southwest in general. But sheath, S-H-E-A-T-H, does appear to be a little bit of a regionalism for sheath. They are the same cake as far as I can tell. And there’s something happening here with that pronunciation.

Barry Poppik’s theory, I think, is pretty sound. His theory is that with a particular Texas accent, the word sheet can sound like the S word. And so perhaps as a way of avoidance, which is a well-chronicled way that language changes. And a good idea with chocolate cake. People might have decided maybe the word was really sheath. Because there’s nothing sheath-like happening here. The cake isn’t covering anything, but it’s not enclosing or enveloping anything like, say, a sheath of a sword would, right?

Yeah.

Or a sheath of a knife.

No, no.

So there’s something happening. The sheath is the newer form. It dates to about the 1950s, so it’s got a long history. If nothing else, that gives you a little bit of weight in favor of using sheath. But sheet cake is the older, more common, and more well-established form.

Okay.

But, again, as a regionalism, I think it’s about as harmless as they come. So in summary, Katie, you’re fine with sheath cake. It might not be the oldest form or the most formal form or the one used everywhere by more people, but it’s totally fine. Continue happily.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Well, thanks a lot for calling.

Thanks a lot, you guys.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Oh, yum.

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