We write cheesecake, but chocolate cake. Why?

[TomUK]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle. But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

[Raymott]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle.
You can't use "Bob's your uncle" like this. The context requires you to say, "I thought I could just look it up in a dictionary, and Bob would be my uncle." But this is not idiomatic.

But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.
Then Bob can't be your uncle yet.

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

I assume you'd give quite a bit of dough to know the answer. But I don't want to appear to be pudding forward half-baked answers.

[Hedwig]

I think I'm ready to cook supper after these posts. Not the healthy salad Id' planned, though.

[TheParser]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle. But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


(1) Your post and the replies were very humorous and entertaining. Thank you.

(2) After checking my dictionaries and the Web, I think that the term in question

has gone through the same process that has affected many other words:

(a) First, it was indeed spelled cheese cake.

(b) Then it became cheese-cake.

(c) Finally, cheesecake.

[konungursvia]

Even if an authority dared to make a rule, he would be overstepping his authority. The real reasons are normative, i.e. what the community is used to, so distilling it into a principle would be rather false.

Perhaps cheesecloth existed for long enough to make cheesecake look right. Whereas chocolate teapot and chocolate egg and chocolate bunny indicated otherwise.

[BobK]

... the term in question

has gone through the same process that has affected many other words:

(a) First, it was indeed spelled cheese cake.

(b) Then it became cheese-cake.

(c) Finally, cheesecake.

For this reason, I used to keep several generations of the same dictionary (much to the distress of MrsK). My favourite example is the female blackbird (which is not a black bird; it is brown).

b

[Tdol]

Could it be that there are many different types of chocolate cake, but cheesecake is somehow more homogeneous?

[Barb_D]

All I can really say is, I need to find my recipe for chocolate cheesecake. It had diabetics 100 yards away dropping into comas, but it sure was good. One secret was to put Keebler Elves (chocolate sandwhich cookies with chocolate cream filling) into a food processor to form crumbs used to make the crust.

[SoothingDave]

I think if you spell it without a space, cheesecake has fewer calories.

[BobK]

All I can really say is, I need to find my recipe for chocolate cheesecake. It had diabetics 100 yards away dropping into comas, but it sure was good. One secret was to put Keebler Elves (chocolate sandwhich cookies with chocolate cream filling) into a food processor to form crumbs used to make the crust.

The Br English translation would be Bourbon biscuits (pronounced like the dynasty not the drink). Sounds good

b