bowlas
English
Noun
bowlas
- (slang, obsolete) Round tarts of sugar, apple and bread, sold in the streets.
- 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Cannot Work, and Those that Will Not Work:
- Among the regular articles of this street-sale are "Coventrys," or three-cornered puffs with jam inside; raspberry biscuits; cinnamon biscuits; "chonkeys," or a kind of mince-meat baked in crust; Dutch butter-cakes; Jews' butter-cakes; "bowlas," or round tarts made of sugar, apple, and bread; "jumbles," or thin crisp cakes made of treacle, butter, and flour; and james, or open tarts with a little preserve in the centre.
References
- The Slang Dictionary, 1864, John Camden Hotten