This brief history of the Eccles Cake was first published on Waitrose.com in June 2002. For the recipe click here.

Local-boy-made-good Kevin Gould retreads the streets of his Lancashire hometown to tell the story of the Eccles cake, a puff pastry parcel filled with succulent Greek currants.

It is Salford's sachertorte, Bury's brioche, Bolton's baklava and Chorlton's croissant. It is the Eccles cake, a deceptively simple Manchester-made confection that ranks with the world's best baked goods. I'm proud to say I was born in Eccles, a currant's throw from Bradburn's 'Only Old Original' Eccles cake shop on Church Street. Bradburn's has now gone to that pastry shop in the sky, and the inheritors of the mantle are the Edmonds, who have devoted their working lives to the baking of proper local patisserie. By 'proper', of course, I mean 'real'.

When I were a lad, 'real' meant 'very', as in United are real good. Although Manchester is now a bustling hub inhabited by loft-dwelling types, Ann and Ian Edmonds are still keeping it real, the fourth generation to produce Edmonds' Real Lancashire Eccles Cakes. Baked from puff pastry that envelops succulent dried fruit, the Eccles cake is a heavenly handmade product, its currants steeped in sugar, its origins steeped in history.

Eccles is now subsumed into Greater Manchester, but it is a borough with a proud history. It's name probably derives from the Greek ecclesia, meaning 'assembly' and, indeed, it is famous for an annual assembly - the 'Wakes', a fair characterised by licentious maypole dancing, copious ale quaffing and conspicuous currant-cake consuming. Sadly, the urban planning of the Sixties took much of the soul out of Eccles, and by the late Seventies the Edmonds had relocated to Ardwick, in sight of Belle Vue, in my youth the home of Saturday Night All-In Wrestling, now an estate of executive homes. The boulevards of Ardwick itself are now fringed by university buildings, Commonwealth Games sports stadia, and the world's only purpose-built Eccles cake factory.

My father's concept was that the product should be made just like it would at home, says managing director, Ann. Only on a bigger scale. Bigger is right. Kenneth started the factory with just eight staff; his daughter now employs 70 people who between them make a whopping 750,000 cakes a week. Each cake, however, is still made by hand.

The factory door opens and the soothing smell of warming pastry welcomes us. We use ten tonnes a week of the best currants money can buy, says Ian. Known as 'Vostizza A', these come from a Greek farmer's co-op in Aeghion, a town near Corinth, from whose name we get the word 'currant'. It takes five tonnes of grapes (dried by placing them alternately in the sun, then the shade) to yield a tonne of currants. It's no surprise that the firm is the co-op's largest client, and that its manager's office is festooned in tribute with pictures of Old Trafford's finest.

Even though the currants arrive ready-washed, workers carefully wash them again. This allows us to quality-control the fruit, says Ian, and plumps it up a little, ready for baking. The fruit emerges a glistening blue-black and is taken to the bake-room, where it is mixed with sugar and butter.

Ann and Ian agree that, while mechanisation makes economic sense, it's worth retaining the handmade process. It's the only way to make an individual product, says Ann. I remember well the smell in my Mum's kitchen of Eccles cakes warming in the oven for an after-school treat. Have they changed? Not one bit. They're still densely flavoured, deliciously sweet local delicacies - real Lancashire, real Eccles cakes, and real good, too.

Ingredients
500g flaky pastry
25g melted butter
Nutmeg
50g mixed peel
100g sugar
200g currants