wastel

From Middle English wastel, from Old French wastel, gastel (> French gâteau), from Late Latin wastellum, from Frankish *wastil, perhaps from Proto-Germanic *wistiz (“sustenance, food”), from Proto-Indo-European *wes- (“to be”). Cognate with Middle High German wastel (“a kind of bread”). Compare Old High German wist (“food”) and Old English wist (“food”). Doublet of gateau.

wastel (countable and uncountable, plural wastels)

1. (obsolete) A kind of fine white bread or cake.
   • Chaucer

     Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde / With roasted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.

   • Sir Walter Scott

     the simnel bread and wastel cakes, which were only used at the tables of the highest nobility

• Ewalts