The term "bride" appears in combination with many words, some of which are obsolete. Thus "bridegroom" is a newly married man, and "bride-bell," "bride-banquet" are old equivalents of wedding-bells, wedding-breakfast. "Bridal" (from "Bride-ale"), originally the wedding-feast itself, has grown into a general descriptive adjective, the "bridal" ceremony. The "bride-cake" had its origin in the Roman "confarreatio", an upper-class form of marriage, the essential features of whose ceremony were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and spelt flour, and the holding by the bride of three wheat-ears, a symbol of plenty.