The Old English word tharf, meaning need or necessity, is first recorded in the early eighth century, and last recorded in the early fourteenth century. Just as it was vanishing as an independent word, however, tharf became part of the compound tharf-cake, a name still in use until the end of the last century. As its “needy” origin suggests, tharf-cake was very plain fare: a simple but nourishing lump of unleavened bread, hardly the kind of thing that we would now call cake.