It is made from plain bread dough enriched with sticky sweet lard and sugar as well as dried fruit and mixed spices.

[3][2] Elizabeth David (1977) remarks that "It was only when sugar became cheap, and when the English taste for sweet things—particularly in the Midlands and the North—became more pronounced, that such rich breads or cakes were made or could be bought from the bakery every week.

[2] In the days when ovens were fired only once a week, and in some households only once a fortnight, for the baking of a very large batch of bread and dough products, any dough not used for making the daily bread was transformed into richer products such as lardy cakes, which thus earned the alternative name 'scrap cakes'.

As reported by the author Elizabeth David, a Hampshire cookbook advises that the cake be turned upside down after baking "so the lard can soak through."

[4] According to food writer Elizabeth David, the lard in lardy cakes is nearly always "worked into plain dough after the first rising or proving".