Tansy Cakes

[My Good Babushka]

Tansy cakes were eaten during Lent because tansy is toxic herb used to treat intestinal worms that many people associated with all the fish eaten at Lent. It also controls flatulence. Tansy was also used to repel mosquitoes, fleas and ants.
Also called Bitter Buttons, Cow Bitter, Mugwort, and Golden Buttons, tansy was used as a worm-warding type of embalming. It was packed into coffins and wreaths of tansy were placed on the dead. By the 19th century tansy was so familiar at funerals that the flower was held in disdain for it's morbid associations.