what is the difference between a cake and a gateau (UK)?

well?

Emergent Service Workers = cake

Precariat = bread and dripping

The rest = gateau

gateau is generally gooey, cake is a bit more solid and has a higher sponge content

Cake is cake, gateau generally Black Forest Gateau and related items. I guess that the real difference is how much cream and other bits (cherries etc.) are on the cake.

these dictionaries have some funny ideas:

A cake or pastry, especially a light one filled with custard, fruit, or nuts.

food baked or served in the form of a cake <eggplant gâteau>

eggplant? gtfo smdh

winning definition imo:

any of various rich and elaborate cakes

gateau is cake in dessert form

cakes are rich almost by definition. so if it's "elaborate" it's a gateau?

gateau is cake in dessert form

wtf

i.e. gateau is all cream and stuff that you have to sit and eat with a spoon

If you offer it to a French friend and they pull a face it's a cake. If they accept it, it's a gateau.

idk, layers of cream seem important here.

stolen from http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=895885 -

"English borrowed gateau from French in the mid-nineteenth century, and at first used it fairly indiscriminately for any sort of cake, pudding, or cake-like pie...Since the Second World War, however, usage of the term has honed in on an elaborate 'cream cake': the cake element, generally a fairly unremarkable sponge, is in most cases simply an excuse for lavish layers of cream, and baroque cream and fruit ornamentation...The word gateau is the modern French descendant of Old French guastel, 'fine bread'; which is probably of Germanic origin. In its northeastern Old French dialect from wasel it as borrowed into English in the thirteenth century, where it survived until the seventeenth century." ---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 138)

google autocomplete seems to suggest that eggplant gateau is a Gordon Ramsay thing

v v gateau-y I think you'll agree (linking cos hueg) http://katesrecipebox.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/dscn3778.jpg

a daft name for melanzane parmigiana then

OED just fucking with us now:

A cake or pudding; now usu. a large rich cake often filled with cream, or cream and fruit, and highly decorated; also, meat or fish baked and served in the form of a cake (see also quot. 18611). veal gâteau n. minced veal made up like a pudding, and boiled in a shape or mould.

Melanzane was in Sugarbabes at one point, right