The earliest recipe for pound cake is found in the English cook book The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse, published in 1747.

Eliza Leslie, who wrote the 1851 edition of Direction for Cookery, used 10 eggs, beat them as lightly as possible, mixed them with a pound of flour, then added the juice of two lemons or three large oranges.

[3] An early variation on this cake replaced some of the flour with cornmeal made from dried corn (maize), which was then called Indian meal.

In tradition, the popular cake of the French region of Brittany, as its name implies, uses the same quantity of the four ingredients, but with no added fruit of any kind.

However, the Caribbean parts of the world that speak French traditionally add rum to the ingredients for Christmas Eve or even mashed bananas for extra moisture.

The ponqué is essentially a wine-drenched cake with a cream or sugar coating, and it is very popular at birthdays, weddings and other social celebrations.

With the simple addition of nuts, cocoa, dried fruits and alcohols, and the use of different shapes and sizes of tins, a wide variety of traditional German cakes are made.

In the technical language of professional baking, these recipes are classified as Eischwerteig mit Fett ("egg-heavy batter with shortening").