Piece of Cake

The most commonly repeated theory ties this to the "cakewalk," a competitive strutting dance performed by enslaved Black Americans that mockingly imitated the formal manners of plantation owners, with a cake awarded to the winning couple. It's a compelling story, but it runs into a real problem: the earliest confirmed print use of "piece of cake" is in the British edition of Ogden Nash's 1936 book Primrose Path, where it directly replaces an earlier American phrase, "everything is jake," undermining a purely American cakewalk origin. Simpler theories, that cake is just generally easy and pleasant to eat, remain just as plausible and just as unproven.