Kendal Mint Cake been making confectionery since 1840 in the Isle of Man. When one of the four sons, Daniel Quiggin, moved to Kendal in 1880, the mint cake company was formed. In the BBC TV programme "Great British Menu", series 5, Lisa Allen visited Quiggin's factory and used Quiggin's Kendal Mint Cake in her Strawberries with Meringue & Kendal Mint Cake Water Ice dessert. In the BBC TV programme "Great British Railway Journeys" (Series 7, Episode 2), Michael Portillo visited Quiggin's factory. Wilson's Mint Cake was founded in 1913, when James Wilson purchased a factory in the Stricklandgate area of the town.
You can't have your cake and eat it 1546, as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?". In John Davies' "Scourge of Folly" of 1611, the same order is used, as "A man cannot eat his cake and haue it stil." In Jonathan Swift's 1738 farce "Polite Conversation", the character Lady Answerall says "she cannot eat her cake and have her cake". The order was reversed again in a posthumous adaptation of "Polite Conversation" in 1749, "Tittle Tattle; or, Taste A-la-Mode", as "And she cannot have her Cake and eat her Cake". From 1812 (R. C. Knopf's "Document Transcriptions of War of 1812" (1959) VI.