dacquoise is a confection that looks like a cake but consists of two or three layers of hazelnut- or almond-flavored cooked meringue with a filling sandwiched between each layer. See meringue. Buttercream is traditional, but fruit fillings and whipped cream are also commonly used. A dusting of confectioner’s sugar may cover the top and sides of the dacquoise, or it may be spread with buttercream or left bare to show the beautiful layering of meringue circles and filling. A dacquoise can be made large, like a cake, or small, for individual desserts. Julia Child writes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1979, Vol. 2) that a great deal of disagreement exists in French cookbooks on what the layers should be filled with, and “since no one agrees on anything, you are quite safe in doing whatever you wish.” This elegant dessert is found in pastry shops all over Paris, where it may be called a Succès or a Progrès. According to Child, the difference depends on whether ground almonds are used in the meringue or a mixture of almonds and hazelnuts. However, even this rule is not hard and fast. Older French cookbooks typically use one of these names instead of “dacquoise,” regardless of the cake’s composition. In his Gastronomie pratique (1928), Ali-Bab simply calls the confection a gâteau meringué (meringue cake) and recommends that it be filled with any sort of flavored cream, such as pistachio, chocolate, or mocha.

Early Forms

The term “dessert” comes from the French verb desservir, meaning “to clear the table.” It is mentioned as the penultimate course in two menus from the fourteenth-century Ménagier de Paris, in one case consisting of venison and frumenty (a sort of pudding), and in the other of a preserve (presumably made with honey), candied almonds, fritters, tarts, and dried fruit. The most common final course at elite medieval meals—referred to in France as issue—consisted of a sort of digestif of hippocras (spiced wine) and whole sweet spices, often candied. See comfit and hippocras. It was only in seventeenth-century France that the final course in a multicourse meal came reliably to be called “dessert.” But even then, it was not entirely devoted to sweet dishes any more than the preceding courses were consistently savory. In France, as in Italy and England, there were also meals made up almost entirely of sweets where the focus was on artistry mingled with ostentation, rather than on the food per se. In medieval and early renaissance England, a banquet of sweetmeats, sometimes termed simply “a banquet,” might take the form of an entire meal devoted to sweets. This repast was occasionally served after a meal, which itself consisted of both sweet and savory dishes. The sweet banquet was sometimes served at a separate table, in a separate room, in a garden setting, or even in a separate “banketting house,” where the tables would be set with displays well in advance. See banqueting houses.

Until the seventeenth century, sweet and savory were not always distinct. In Christoforo di Messisbugo’s sixteenth-century Italian banquet menus, meals typically began with an assortment of confectionery and concluded with more of the same. But just about every other dish in the intervening courses, whether a fish pie or stewed capon, had some sugar added to it, too.

The situation was not significantly different in France. Food historian Jean-Louis Flandrin has estimated that some 80 percent of still-extant French recipes for meat and fish dishes were sweetened in the fifteenth century. The number had dropped to around 50 percent a hundred years later, and in the seventeenth century, some 30 percent of these dishes were still being sweetened. Increasingly, though, the trend was to segregate sweet from savory. Just why this split occurred in France remains hazy, and the explanations are unsatisfactory. Flandrin implies that it signaled a return to earlier French habits, once Italian Renaissance fashions had waned (Italian food was notably sweeter than the French). Chauvinism may well have had something to do with the change; certainly, the first influential cookbook to be published following the period of Italian influence was self-consciously titled Le cuisinier françois (1651), the first cookbook ever to be characterized with a national identity. This nationalistic food consciousness and growing gap between sweet and savory also happen to parallel the demise of spiced food in France. Sugar was initially thought of as a spice; once it had been recategorized in people’s minds as a confectionery and baking ingredient, it perhaps had no place in the new, mostly spice-free cuisine. This is not to say the change occurred overnight; Le cuisinier françois offered plenty of recipes for sweetened meat and fish dishes. Nevertheless, though sweet and savory were still served side by side, they were increasingly not blended on the same plate.

Service à la française

Affluent French seventeenth- and eighteenth-century menus most commonly consisted of three courses (services) made up of platters both large and small, each multidish course served more or less simultaneously buffet-style. This type of presentation was referred to as service à la française (even though it was commonplace all over Europe). Generally more and more sweet dishes were served as the meal progressed. In the first course they were rare, while the second course contained a scattering of side dishes called entremets (literally, “between the dishes”), which could be both savory and sweet. See entremets. In a menu from 1690, listed in François Massialot’s Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois (1691), members of the royal family and guests could choose among entremets of ham or pheasant pies but also blancmange, fritters (beignets), and apricot marmalade–filled tarts. See blancmange and fritters. These sweet items were interspersed among 22 platters of roast beef, mutton, suckling pig, and “all sorts of poultry.” Other menus suggest entremets of sweet omelets, fruit custards, crème brûlée, even a sugared artichoke custard. See crème brûlée. It was only once this service had been fully cleared that the dessert course was served. The 1690 Dictionnaire universel defined dessert as “the last course placed on the table … composed of fruits, pastry, confectionery, cheese, etc.” This final course was the responsibility of the office or pantry, whereas the earlier dishes came from the kitchen. Accordingly, what characterized the dessert course was not so much that it was sweet, but that it was cold. It was also the most visually exciting part of the meal. Though some degree of spectacle distinguished every course, the final dessert service deployed the color, texture, and sculptural potential of confectionery with sometimes fantastic results. See sugar sculpture. Broadly speaking, the confectioners followed the current style in the other applied arts. Thus, seventeenth-century dessert tables featured baroque pyramids of sparkling sweetmeats; eighteenth-century displays were replete with neoclassical statuary often set on a mirrored surface; the Romantic period saw pièces montées resembling crumbling classical ruins; and the Victorian period brought a ponderous historicism. With the arrival of service à la russe, these spectacular displays largely ceased to exist as table decoration was limited mainly to flowers and individual servings were brought to each diner in turn. In bourgeois homes, a fancy dessert might be displayed on the sideboard throughout dinner, but it was a shadow of its ancien régime ancestors.

According to Arthur Young (1792), an English writer visiting France on the eve of the Revolution, “dessert” was to be expected at even a modest meal. This practice apparently stood in marked contrast to the custom in England. “A regular dessert with us [the English] is expected,” he explains in Travels during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789, “at a considerable table only, or at a moderate one, when a formal entertainment is given; in France it is as essential to the smallest dinner as to the largest; if it consists only of a bunch of dried grapes, or an apple, it will be as regularly served as the soup.” Throughout his travels, Young described several of these desserts, which typically consisted of fruit, nuts, biscuits, and wine—more or less in line with the definition current in eighteenth-century England. Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopaedia (1741) defines dessert as “the last service brought on the table of people of quality; when the meats are all taken off. The dessert consists of fruits, pastry-works, confections, etc.” Other English sources, however, limit dessert to a final course of fruit only.

The French system of serving meals in three or more courses concluding with one called dessert was emulated across Europe. Naturally, not everyone could afford the splendors of Versailles. Heinrich Klietsch’s and Johann Hermann Siebell’s Bamberger Kochbuch (1805), intended for both “noble and bourgeois tables,” includes 78 suggested menus, mostly consisting of two courses. The first is exclusively savory, whereas the second may include anything from roast duck to capon pies to ice cream, sweet jelly, and cake. In addition to these menus, the authors include a selection of “dessert plates.” Although not all are specified, those singled out include sorbet, ice cream, fruit, cookies, and “other confectionery.” Given that these dessert plates are always listed as the last item of the second course, it is likely that they arrived at the table after the other items had been eaten, although no indication exists that the table had been cleared in the interim, as it was in France.

Service à la russe

French cuisine, the trendsetting style across ancien régime Europe, underwent its own revolution with the fall of the Bastille. With the decapitation of the old aristocracy, the grand, buffet-style courses made up of multiple dishes were supplanted by a form of sequential service adopted from a Russian model—hence the name service à la russe. The change was very gradual and not universally appreciated. The great chef Carême, for one, had little use for it. See carême, marie-antoine. In this new style, all the diners ate the same food, more or less, and the dishes arrived one after the other, much as they do today. The entremets, increasingly mostly sweet, shifted to the penultimate position, with dessert following. In other words, now two sweet courses concluded a meal. Flandrin points to the shift in language between menus in the eighteenth century, where “dessert” was the term for a course, to the late-nineteenth-century use of “desserts” (in the plural) to refer to the sweet foods themselves. By that point, the entremets often consisted of a sweet, creamy dish such as ice cream or bavarois, whereas dessert might include cakes, cookies, fruit, or petits fours. See desserts, chilled; ice cream; and small cakes. In France, a cheese course was sometimes slipped between the two.

By the 1950s, the entremets and dessert courses had elided into one, resulting in today’s most common sequence of entrée, main course, salad, cheese, and dessert. The menus served at the Elysée Palace give some evidence that this shift toward the modern sequence occurred during World War II. Today, the distinction between entremets and dessert has mostly been lost. The most recent edition of the Académie française dictionary defines entremets as “a sweet preparation served after the cheese and which may take the place of dessert.” At least when it comes to dessert, the West largely followed the French example.

Dessert in the United States

Initially, Americans aped the British model. They could, for example, look to Maria Eliza Rundell’s widely reprinted A New System of Domestic Cookery (1807) for what was appropriate for a second course—mainly birds, game and shellfish, vegetables, fruit tarts, stewed apples, cheesecakes, and “all the finer sorts of Puddings, Mince Pies, &c.” The book was apparently not intended for “people of quality,” since it makes no mention of dessert. Robert Robert’s The House Servant’s Directory (1827) clearly aimed higher up the social scale. His dessert is served very much in the French manner: following two courses (served à la française) and a cheese course, the table is completely cleared before resetting for a sweet course of cake or possibly ice cream or blancmange. See blancmange and cake.

Hotels and restaurant menus in the latter half of the nineteenth century tended to break down sweet foods into two, not always easily understood, categories: pastry and dessert. The former included pies but also occasionally pudding; the second, fruit and nuts but also sometimes jellies, sponge cakes, ice cream, and charlotte russe. The distinction began to evaporate in the early twentieth century, even though fancy menus might well continue to include two sweet courses in the French style.

Today, a single dessert is the most common conclusion to a multicourse meal, though many fine dining restaurants make a habit of serving chocolates, petits fours, or some other sweet nothing after the official dessert has been cleared. See mignardise. As in France, dessert has also come to include any sweet food that might be served at the end of meal no matter when it is eaten, leading mothers to reprimand their children about not eating ice cream, cupcakes, pie, and other “desserts” before dinner.

See also charlotte; france; gelatin desserts; italy; pie; pudding; and sponge cake.

Bibliothèque Municipal de Dijon. “Collection des menus.” http://patrimoine.bm-dijon.fr/pleade/subset.html?name=sub-menus (accessed 1 April 2014).

Flandrin, Jean Louis. Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Krondl, Michael. Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011.

Messisbugo, Cristoforo di. Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale. Ferrara: Giovanni de Buglhat et Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1549.

Rundell, Maria Eliza Ketelby. A New System of Domestic Cookery. Philadelphia: Benjamin C. Buzby, 1807.

“What’s on the Menu?” http://menus.nypl.org (accessed 1 April 2014).

Young, Arthur. Travels during the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789 Undertaken More Particularly with a View of Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France. London: W. Richardson, 1792.

Michael Krondl

dessert design refers to the presentation of the course, generally consisting of sweet foods, that comes at the end of the meal.

Derived from the French verb desservir, dessert is what arrives after the table is “unserved” or cleared, and after our nutritional needs have been met; it is, in that sense, superfluous. See dessert. In his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine (1873), Alexandre Dumas wrote that there are three types of appetite: that which comes from hunger; hunger that comes with eating; and “that roused at the end of a meal when, after normal hunger has been satisfied by the main courses, and the guest is truly ready to rise without regret, a delicious dish holds him to the table with a final tempting of his sensuality.” Dessert requires this third type of appetite; its aesthetic display and sensuous experience are of primary importance.

Dessert is as much about form as it is about taste. Confectionery and baking, from dough to caramel to marzipan, lend themselves readily to sculpture, for example. See sugar sculpture. As a type of plastic art, dessert therefore is more likely to borrow from and contribute to the other art disciplines of its time, from architecture to fashion. Even the language of dessert making—molding, casting, dyeing, setting—and its associated tools have little in common with cooking. See confectionery equipment and pastry tools. Desserts are shaped, constructed, and fabricated (and, now, mass-produced) with an eye toward form; taste is often secondary. They have long been prepared by professionals with specialized tools and equipment in facilities dedicated to sweets, explicitly separate from the kitchen. See pastry chef. Ultimately, dessert’s place on and at the table is to amuse, not feed, and, historically, to communicate power or status, provide a locus for ritual and tradition, exchange cultural traits, even transcend the laws of gravity and physics. Desserts were made to awe, to show off, to delight. So what is dessert, after all? It is design: “the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function,” as theorist Christopher Alexander explains on the first page of his landmark 1964 book Notes on the Synthesis of Form.

Luxury at a Large Scale

Sugar is the primary building material of dessert. Even before the idea of this separate and final course fully evolved, a tenth-century Arab recipe described marzipan shaped like fish and perfumed with camphor. See marzipan and middle east. In early Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci wrote in Notes on Cuisine of the fate of his marzipan: “I have observed with pain that my Signor Ludovico and his court gobble up all the sculptures I give them, right to the last morsel, and now I am determined to find other means that do not taste as good, so that my works may survive.” The ultimate luxury commodity, his chosen medium of sugar was preservable, malleable, and believed to have medicinal properties. See medicinal uses of sugar. And (unfortunately for Leonardo’s sculpture), it was edible! Symbolically, technically, and gastronomically, sugar was the perfect material for public consumption—panem et circenses combined in one form.

From Lisbon to Antwerp, extravagant state, noble, or church banquets were followed by even more elaborate sugar collations. In a separate room, tables abounded with large sugar-paste sculptures depicting important people, fantastic buildings, and mythological creatures, often gilded or silvered to underscore their richness. See banqueting houses. Unlike the main meal, which was produced by the kitchen, the sugar work was created by individual artisans, sculptors, or apothecaries in their workshops. In 1574 sugar sculptures for a banquet given in honor of Henri III of France were the designs of Jacopo Sansovino, one of Venice’s chief architects, whose loggetta still adorns the base of Campanile di San Marco. That a sugar sculpture might be on par with a building shows the primacy of sweets not as food, but as an expression of power and carrier of meaning, much like a church, a palazzo, or a fortress. See symbolic meanings.

This 1747 plate depicts the desserts of preserves, sugared almonds, fruit, and ices displayed on the head tables of a banquet given by Judas Thaddäus, Freiherr von Reischach, for the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Composed as architectural tableaux set in formal gardens, the desserts are allegories on historical events from the death of Emperor Charles VI to the election of Francis I. getty research institute

Innovation and Inspiration

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought a number of innovations. The ascendance of the French court (and gardens) at Versailles brought with it a new style of dining in both preparation and presentation. Service à la française meant that the number of dishes for each course matched the number of diners and was served simultaneously, with dessert as a separate service. The kitchen was divided between the cuisine, where the meal was prepared, and the office, which was solely responsible for dessert, including ices. See ice cream. Each household department produced complex menus, describing the courses and particular dishes. The office was also stocked with the latest innovations in design: sophisticated containers, molds, and freezing pots. Service en pyramide stacked multiple layers of preserved fruit, sugar pastes, and plant material on successively smaller tiers of silver or porcelain. Eventually, these dessert sculptures grew so extensive that they became entire miniature gardens, which remained on the table throughout the entire meal. And, finally, cookbooks with engraved plates of elaborate, expressly axial table plans rivaled design treatises on architecture, landscape, and fortification. Tables became landscapes unto themselves, in which the desserts represented statuary, plants, or buildings. The period’s quest for verticality as a mark of (royal) triumph over a landscape was achieved far more easily with towers made of sugar on a dining table than with any building materials in a city or countryside.

Antonin Carême, known as the first celebrity chef (Talleyrand, Napoleon, and Tsar Alexander I were among his clients), and one of the last in a long line of culinary figures in French haute cuisine, was a celebrated creator of such tablescapes. See carême, marie-antoine. Working at a patisserie on rue Vivienne in Paris, he would walk across the street to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he drew inspiration from the oversized illustrated catalogs depicting architectural wonders from Rome to Egypt. His resulting pièces montées (set pieces) included castles, pyramids, and temples inspired by ancient cultures and also borrowed from the neoclassical architecture that was being taught down the street at the École des Beaux Arts. For these confections made of spun sugar or pâté morte (dead pastry or decorative pastry without yeast), taste was irrelevant; the goal was appearance. In fact, although a few elements such as flowers or fruits may have been edible, the larger elements were often kept and stored for another occasion (bringing to mind the tradition of keeping slices of a wedding cake, or bride’s cake, to celebrate anniversary years later). See wedding cake.

In 1803 Carême opened his own very successful patisserie, in which he displayed his pièces montées in the windows, bringing in tourists and locals alike. Previously available only to the elite, desserts now reached a larger public thanks to a drop in sugar prices resulting from increased production in the colonies. Newly affordable, sugar was used to sweeten chocolate, coffee, and tea and, inevitably, to create sweets to accompany them. As dining hours shifted to later in the day, these snacks filled a void in the long stretches between meals, and by the nineteenth century, teatime (the French goûter) was firmly established. See sweet meals and tea. From London to Madrid to Vienna, the political, social, and cultural life of the bourgeoisie centered around coffee, chocolate, and tea houses, whose delicate confections were supplied by patisseries. Porcelain plates, influenced by the rococo trompe l’oeil sugar sculptures of previous centuries, now displayed all manner of tarts and éclairs, whose size was more appropriate to this new meal. As the scale of desserts shrank, the influence of fashion and the decorative arts on their designs grew; color, texture, and pattern came to the fore. Since sugar was no longer a luxury (and therefore status symbol) in and of itself, desserts had to display artisanal quality and the latest fashion. Coupled with the emergence of nouvelle cuisine and service à la russe (courses served sequentially, allowing for food to be brought to the table fresh and hot), this new style of dessert brought with it a new appreciation for taste.

A Desire for Speed

Toward the turn of the twentieth century, dessert again began to change, and nowhere was this clearer than in the United States. The burgeoning (and busy) American middle class had few of the artisan bakeries available in continental Europe, and so the focus was on home cooking. Instead of relying on domestic help, Americans looked to science and technology. Into the void came kitchen machines like eggbeaters and chemical leaveners such as baking powder, all of which sped up the baking process. See chemical leaveners and whisks and beaters. Product manufacturers distributed cookbooks full of quickbread recipes, encouraging the widespread adoption of such tools. Industrialization and mass production created a dessert culture that was more about speed than refinement, taste than presentation.

Today, after a century of mass-produced and machined biscuits and chocolates, dessert has lost its place at the table. Perhaps the clearest example is the recent food fad, the macaron. See macarons. The brand best known for macarons is the Parisian patisserie, Ladurée, which ran a fashionable nineteenth-century tea salon designed by the painter Jules Cheret, who took inspiration from the Paris Opera House. Ladurée’s macarons are still made in France with the color palette of the original Cheret design, but they are flown in the tens of thousands each day to outlets worldwide and can be found in any major airport, usually just before the security gates. Even McDonald’s recently introduced macarons in its McCafés. Once part of a tradition of confections to be savored in a social setting, today’s macarons are a mass-produced item to be eaten alone, quickly—and usually on the go.

The Past in the Future

Interestingly, the most recent developments in dessert design harken back to the elaborate confections of Venice and Vienna when taste was secondary but the show was everything. Bompas & Parr, the British food designers (trained as architects) who repopularized jelly by treating it much like sugar sculptures of their day, use sweet as spectacle. For New Year’s Eve in 2013 in London, in collaboration with food technology experts and pyrotechnicians, they created a multisensory firework display, in which revelers smelled and tasted fruity mists and edible banana confetti matched to the fireworks (all, of course, both halal and kosher). They must have been influenced by the description of a 1549 feast to welcome Philip II to the Netherlands, in which guests were led to an “enchanted hall” at midnight, where sugar collation descended from the ceiling, along with hail and perfumed rain made from sugar candy.

In the United States, the newest 3D printers can print chocolate, sugar, or candy, bringing the art of the confectioner and chocolatier to the home kitchen. The resulting elaborate creations can be made in a fraction of the time and with as little skill. One company, 3D Systems, is collaborating with Hershey’s to offer 3D-printed food to consumers. See sugar, unusual uses of. Whether a democratic experience like fireworks along the Thames, do-it-yourself (DIY) or mass customization, dessert is designed for and by everyone. But what of taste? Here, the dessert maker’s dilemma parallels that of other design professionals in finding a balance of form and function.

Krondl, Michael. Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011.

Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power. New York: Penguin, 1985.

Strong, Roy. Feast: A History of Grand Eating. London: Jonathan Cape, 2002.

Wheaton, Barbara. Savoring the Past. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Denise Ramzy

desserts, chilled occupy the crucial middle ground between the frozen and the cool: chilling is an essential element in their creation and enjoyment. Most cold desserts are chilled in advance of serving, and gateaux or dessert cakes layered with whipped or enriched cream are often said to improve after a few hours—or even a rest overnight—in the fridge. Alchemical transformations achieved through setting and stabilizing in a truly cold rather than a merely cool place earn these chilled desserts a special category all their own.

Cold Chilled Desserts

These desserts are thoroughly chilled both to finish them—usually to ensure a set—and for service.

Bavarois

Also known as a Bavarian Cream or crème Bavaroise, this delicate egg-yolk custard, aerated with whipped cream and set with gelatin, is both a dessert in its own right and a key component of others. It can fill a cold charlotte or be molded with paper to stand proudly above the rim of the dish for a chilled “soufflé.” See charlotte; custard; gelatin; and soufflé. Often scented with alcohol and flavored or decorated with fruits, nuts, or chocolate, the bavarois is chilled for four hours to preserve its fluffy lightness while ensuring a firm presentation. The great French chef Carême included bavarois recipes in his early-nineteenth-century cookbooks, though contemporary French sources tend to credit it as a Swiss invention, and the late-nineteenth-century chef Escoffier suggested that it should more properly be called a Muscovite. See carême, marie-antoine and desserts, frozen.

Cassata

Sicilian cassata is composed of a set fruit cream (similar to crème pâtissière) sandwiched between savoy biscuit or sponge layers soaked in alcohol and enclosed in marzipan. It is chilled for approximately three hours before serving. See cassata.

Jelly

Often thought of as a children’s dessert (in the form of Jell-O or packet jelly), a clear jewel-like jelly of fruit juice set with gelatin, agar agar, carrageen, guar or xanthan gums, or arrowroot, and sometimes flavored with wine or alcohol, can be a sophisticated dessert. Molded into beautiful shapes, it might be layered in different colors and flavors, made with milk for a creamy clouded effect, or have fruit suspended in it. See blancmange and molds, jelly and ice cream. It must be chilled in order to set fully and should be served very cold.

Refrigerator or Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Composed of a variable combination of broken-up cookies, butter, sugar, nuts, dried fruit, eggs, and chocolate, these cakes are not baked. Hard ingredients (butter and chocolate) are melted to facilitate mixing, and the result is formed into a log or loaf shape, hardened in the refrigerator, and served very cold in slices.

Partially Frozen Desserts

Some chilled desserts are more deeply chilled than others, or even partially frozen. Others are composed of a combination of frozen ingredients like ice cream or sherbet and nonfrozen ingredients like fruit, sauces, nuts, and other edible decorative elements, such as sprinkles or jimmies. See ice cream; sauce; sherbet; and sprinkles.

Parfait

A perfect balance of soft and firm, a harmony of whipped cream, egg yolks, sugar, and flavor (often alcohol), the classic French parfait has a smooth texture whose secret lies in technique. Instead of the usual custard found in ice cream, sugar syrup at 248°F (120°C) is beaten into egg yolks before mixing with the other ingredients and freezing for 3 to 4 hours. In the United States, the term “parfait” refers to a layered ice cream or frozen yogurt confection similar to a sundae.

Semifreddo

These “semi-frozen” ices, also known in Italy as perfetti, are soft and light in texture, somewhere between a mousse and an ice cream, one part custard and one part whipped cream. Although many recipes confuse semifreddo with parfait—and they are closely related as the alternate Italian name attests—they are technically different. For semifreddo, sugar syrup at 248°F (120°C) is added not to egg yolks, as for parfait, but to beaten egg white, as for Italian meringue. See meringue. The result is an even lighter, softer texture. Many simpler recipes exist for domestic cooks that borrow the name, using less skilled techniques to achieve a similar texture. Some versions do not contain eggs at all, effectively being a semi-frozen uncooked cream. Others incorporate granular sugar into stiffly beaten egg white, as for French meringue. The majority comprise a light mixture of whole eggs and sugar whisked, zabaglione-like, over a double boiler and cooled before folding in whipped cream and perhaps incorporating other ingredients like fruit, honey, or chocolate. See zabaglione. Regardless of cooking technique, semifreddos are never churned in an ice cream machine and are usually frozen into molds, often in a loaf shape that is then sliced for serving. They do not freeze hard; sometimes they are only chilled in the fridge, not frozen. The end result must be cold enough to hold its form and be sliced, but still a bit soft.

Sundae

A sundae is an individual layered dessert of ice cream in one or more flavors, often served in a tall glass. See sundae. It usually comprises a base layer of syrup or crushed fruit, followed by two scoops of ice cream finished with more fruit or syrup, a dry topping like crushed or chopped nuts, and a lavish flourish of whipped cream; it is always crowned with a maraschino cherry with its stem intact. Hot fudge sundaes have heated—usually fudge—sauce. Sundaes may be made more elaborate with layers of fruit instead of syrup, and with different combinations of sauces and decorations. They are often given evocative names, like the Dusty Road, a chocolate sundae sprinkled with malted milk powder; or the All-American Victory sundae in patriotic shades of red, white, and blue that was popular after World War II, composed of vanilla ice cream with a marshmallow topping and both maraschino cherries and fresh blueberries. The Knickerbocker Glory, an idea imported to the United Kingdom from the United States, is presented in a taller glass with chocolate syrup at the base, followed by three scoops of ice cream with alternate layers of various crushed fruits between them. The whole is topped with whipped cream and a maraschino or glacé cherry. An American parfait is similar, though it has no chocolate syrup and its three scoops of ice cream may be separated by either crushed fruit or fruit syrup. It also includes a layer of chopped nuts below the whipped cream. Health-conscious modern versions of the parfait are made with layers of yogurt and granola.

Peach Melba, constructed of vanilla ice cream topped with poached peaches and raspberry coulis, was created by the chef Auguste Escoffier for Dame Nellie Melba, to celebrate her 1892 Covent Garden performance in Wagner’s Lohengrin. On its first outing, it was apparently presented on the back of an iced swan and topped with spun sugar. See escoffier, georges auguste.

Poire Belle Hélène, invented by Escoffier in 1864 and named for the Offenbach opera, is a sophisticated relative of the sundae, composed of a poached pear, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate sauce decorated with crystallized violets.

Split

A split is a horizontally arranged variation on a sundae, classically including a banana, though variations including tropical fruits such as mango or pineapple are increasingly popular.

The classic banana split includes three scoops of ice cream in the center of a dish, bounded on both long sides with a banana sliced lengthways. Each scoop is topped with chocolate or fruit sauces, and the whole is decorated with whipped cream, chopped nuts, and cherries. Variations such as a banana-boat split may include sponge cake at the bottom of the dish.

Black, Keda. Sugar and Spice. London: Hamlyn, 2008.

“More Perfect than a Parfait.” http://www.itchefs-gvci.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=284&Itemid=628 (accessed 25 January 2014).

Tate & Lyle Refineries. Sweet Success: The Tate & Lyle Cookbook. London: Sackett and Marshall, 1977.

Jane Levi

desserts, flambéed, make dramatic use of flame to create spectacle for the diner. Whether deftly performed at a restaurant table with a spirit burner and polished copper pan, or rushed blazing from the family kitchen to a darkened dining room, a flambé can create a thrilling grand finale to a meal. Why stop at a few candles when you can set the whole dessert alight?

Technique

Flambéing is the technique of using alcohol to flame food. In dessert dishes it is usually employed as a final presentational step for a hot or warm dessert and therefore generally done in front of diners either at their own table or a side table. The dish is often briefly finished in butter and sugar (or sugar alone) to achieve some caramelization before the alcohol is added. For maximum effect, attractive cooking utensils—traditionally copper saucepans and chafing dishes—are used over a spirit burner or candle flame, depending on how much of the cooking has already been done in the kitchen. The method of flambéing varies according to how much sauce or juice is in the dish to be flamed. If little or no liquid is already present, the chosen spirit can simply be poured onto the dish and the pan either tilted to catch the flame or a match applied. If the dish is very juicy or has a sauce, then more spirit is usually required to obtain a good flame. It is heated separately in a ladle or small pan, set alight, and poured already flaming onto the dish. Once the flames have subsided, the dessert is served.

Alcohol

To obtain maximum flare, alcohol with a percentage volume of 40 or over is usually recommended for flambéing, selected according to the ingredients in the dish. Fruit liqueurs and strong alcohols like cognac, gin, vodka, bourbon, or whiskey are generally specified, using classic pairings like rum for bananas, kirsch for pineapple or cherries, curaçao for orange, brandy for coffee desserts, and so on. See liqueur. There is disagreement on how much of the alcohol is actually reduced or “burned off” during the flaming process, and how much flavor the flambé imparts, but it seems safe to assume that part of the thrill of a flambéed dessert lies in its scent of almost-burned caramel and retained alcoholic content.

Dishes

Almost anything can be flambéed, and numerous recipes exist for grilled, baked, poached, and fried fruit desserts, from kebabs to cake and ice cream toppings, as well as layered, folded, or rolled pancakes with various stuffings and sauces sent aflame to the table. Savarins, vacherins, babas, meringues, bombes, and sweet omelets are all excellent subjects for the flambé treatment, generally given the epithet “Surprise” to indicate their fiery incarnation. A lick of flame gives a spectacular finishing touch to a Baked Alaska. See baked alaska. The truly classic dishes are those in which the flambé is a component part of the dish, the ones unimaginable—even unworthy of their name—without the flambé step.

Bananas Foster is a 1950s creation from New Orleans, a variation on a banana split made with baked bananas over vanilla ice cream with a dark brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter sauce, flambéed with rum.

Cherries Jubilee was created by Auguste Escoffier for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in 1897. Cherries are lightly poached in lemon syrup and served flambéed with cherry brandy or kirsch over vanilla ice cream.

Crêpes Suzette is the ultimate in table-side flambé, of disputed late-nineteenth-century origin and now somehow redolent of 1970s restaurants, mustachioed waiters, and polished copper pans. Thin pancakes are spread with sweet orange butter enriched with curaçao, briefly fried in foaming orange butter and deftly folded in three to make a round-ended triangle. Brandy, Cointreau, or Grand Marnier is added to the caramelized butter in the pan, ignited, and poured over the neatly stacked pancakes.

Capel, Barnard. The Art of Flambé Cooking. London: Iliffe, 1965.

Hansen, Christine E., Misha T. Kwasniewski, and Gavin L. Sacks. “Decoupling the Effects of Heating and Flaming on Chemical and Sensory Changes during Flambé Cooking.” International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 1, no. 2 (2012): 90–95.

Nilson, Bee. Fondue, Flambé and Side Table Cooking. London: Pelham, 1972.

Jane Levi

desserts, frozen, are compositions with ice cream or frozen yogurt at their core, combined in various ways with other dessert ingredients such as sponge cake, biscuits, nuts, fruits, creams, and sauces. Distinct from desserts individually constructed on the spot from a combination of fresh and frozen ingredients, frozen desserts are built in advance from the components, frozen into a composed whole and presented in their entirety for serving. These creations may be as simple as an ice cream cake or pie, or as extraordinary as a molded and layered bombe in the shape of a ball, a fruit, or an architectural model.

With the right tools, any frozen matter can be sculpted and formed, and both ice and ices have long been carved and molded into specific shapes for elite tables. Elaborate molds were in use for high-status occasions as early as 1714, when a carved ice tree trunk set in chocolate foam soil and hung with 150 tiny fruit-shaped bombes was presented at a celebration given by the Austrian ambassador to Rome. By the early nineteenth century, fancy ices were commonly served in wealthy households, and as refrigeration technology developed in the later nineteenth century, ice cream in all its variations became accessible to a much wider range of people even as manufacturing innovations allowed for the mass production of inexpensive metal goods—molds among them. See ice cream and molds, jelly and ice cream. The Victorian era saw an explosion in molded ice cream constructions, all the way up to the epic scale of Eppelsheimer’s 39-inch-high, 17-liter ice cream Statue of Liberty of 1876. From the mid-twentieth century onward, frozen desserts that go beyond a straightforward tub of ice cream have also become an increasingly important category in industrial food production.

Molded Desserts

Desserts frozen in molds are perhaps the most spectacular of all frozen desserts. The molds themselves are often extraordinary and elaborate, and the internal engineering needed to ensure a stable result requires the layering of different styles of ice creams, sorbets, and other ingredients, which can lead to an interior as visually exciting as the exterior. Since a molded dessert needs to be soft enough to eat and cut while being firm enough to survive presentation and service, it is important to use a slow-melting ice on the outside, such as sorbet, and a softer one, like a parfait or spoom (a lighter, frothier sorbet), on the inside.

Bombe

Bomba in Italian, this is a molded ice cream dessert in a hemispheric shape, usually with one flat surface for stability on the plate when serving. Baked Alaska is a bombe that manages to be baked, frozen, and flambéed all at the same time. See baked alaska and desserts, flambéed.

Crème à la Moscovite was a Victorian ice served partially, rather than fully, frozen. Related to the chilled dessert bavarois, the Moscovite was set with isinglass or gelatin, giving it a slightly jellied texture, and molded into a bombe or cylinder shape.

Nesselrode Pudding, a spectacular frozen dessert, is said to have been invented in 1814 by the great chef Carême for the Russian diplomat Count Karl von Nesselrode. See carême, marie-antoine. It is a rich cream custard enriched with sweet chestnut purée, currants, raisins, candied fruit, whipped cream, and maraschino liqueur. Molded in a bombe or a cylinder, it is served with a cold maraschino custard sauce.

Spumoni, an Italian ice molded in a hemisphere, is composed of two complementary layers, usually a custard-based ice cream on the outside and a semifreddo or parfait inside.

Tortoni or biscuit tortoni, a classic of New York City (although almost certainly descended from Menon’s 1760 recipe for biscuits de glace), is a rich maraschino-flavored ice cream with biscuit crumbs mixed in and on top; the dessert is traditionally served in an individual paper case. It is unclear exactly how tortoni arrived in New York, but a recipe appeared as early as 1889 in The Table, a cookbook written by Alessandro Filippini, chef at the famous restaurant Delmonico’s.

Frozen Versions of Other Desserts

Many commercial suppliers offer frozen variations of typical cakes and desserts, which can also be prepared at home.

Ice Cream Cake, Gateau, or Cheesecake

An ice cream cake or cheesecake is a layered construction starting with a base of sponge cake, brownie, or a crunchy crumb, sometimes topped with fudge sauce before adding the chosen ice cream or ice creams in layers, with or without more layers of cake, and with suitable decorations.

Arctic roll, a British commercial classic, is a log of vanilla ice cream surrounded with raspberry jam and light sponge cake—like a Swiss roll without the interior spiral effect.

Ice Cream Pie

Ice cream pies are made up of a deep, baked pie crust filled with freshly churned or softened commercial ice cream, and usually topped with whipped cream or custard and garnished with nuts, fruit, or other toppings. Eskimo Pie is, confusingly, not a pie, but the American name for a confection the British call a Choc Ice: a small block of ice cream, usually vanilla, encased in chocolate. See eskimo pie.

Ice Cream Sandwich

The “bread” of the sandwich is usually made of triangular, circular, or rectangular wafers, which enclose a filling of ice cream. A fancier version, akin to a vacherin, may be made by using meringue instead of wafers. See meringue and vacherin.

Layered Ice Creams

Simpler ice cream desserts are formed with layers of different ice creams, usually in a rectangular loaf-cake shape that is easily sliced. The Neopolitan is composed of two or more different flavored and colored ice creams, often vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. Pückler is a German variation on the Neopolitan, including layers of crushed macarons soaked in liqueur along with the ice cream layers. Viennetta, a globally available Unilever product, is made of extruded rippled layers of ice cream alternated with sprayed layers of compound chocolate. It is available in various flavor combinations.

See also chestnuts; custard; desserts, chilled; and italian ice.

Liddell, Caroline, and Robin Weir. Ices: The Definitive Guide. London: Grub Street, 1995.

“Nesselrode Pudding” and other frozen desserts at Historic Food, the website of food historian Ivan Day. http://www.historicfood.com/Nesselrode%20Pudding%20Recipe.htm (accessed 26 November 2014).

Stogo, Malcolm. Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts: A Commercial Guide to Production and Marketing. New York and Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 1997.

Weir, Robin, and Caroline Weir. Ice Creams, Sorbets and Gelati: The Definitive Guide. London: Grub Street, 2010.

Jane Levi

dextrose

See glucose.

diabetes

See sugar and health.

Diwali is India’s most widely celebrated festival, an occasion that serves to remind humanity of the triumph of good over evil. On the night of the autumn new moon (between October and November), cities, towns, and villages in India sparkle with the glow of oil lamps, candles, and tiny string lights that decorate houses, walls, gardens, and public spaces. This array of lights is called deepavali in Sanskrit, and the modern Hindi term “Diwali” is derived from that. The festival is a most distinctive cultural and religious marker.

From the perspective of the agricultural calendar, Diwali is a postharvest celebration. It takes place after the main autumn crop has been harvested and there is cause to be thankful (except in years of disastrous droughts or floods) that the coming year’s food supply is ensured. Preparing the land for the winter sowing is preceded by the enjoyment of autumn’s bounty. Spiritually, however, Diwali is unique in being not only an affirmation of good over evil, but also an occasion celebrated by three religious communities: Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. For Sikhs, Diwali is the anniversary of Guru Hargobind’s liberation from imprisonment in 1619, whereas the Jains believe it to be the day when the great reformer Mahavira achieved nirvana.

For Hindus, Diwali is draped in a rich tapestry of myths that vary from region to region. See hinduism. In the north, it is a celebration of Rama’s victory over Ravana. In the south, it honors Krishna’s killing of the demon Narakasura. In the west, it marks the day when Vishnu banished the demon king Bali to the nether regions. In all these areas, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, is worshipped during Diwali. For many business people, Diwali also marks the beginning of a new working year—a reflection of the occasion’s agricultural roots. In the eastern states (Bengal, Orissa, and Assam), however, it is the goddess Kali who is worshipped on Diwali instead of Lakshmi, and the story of her conquest of evil takes precedence over other Indian myths.

Out of this diversity of faith and myth, one factor unites all who celebrate Diwali—the eating and exchanging of sweets. The sense of a new beginning, whether in the field, at home, or in a place of business, is accompanied by the hope of better things to come, and the natural culinary expression of that mood may be seen in the extraordinary variety of sweets prepared in different regions of the country.

In northern and western India, women labor for days in advance to produce items made with flour, semolina, rice flour, besan (chickpea flour), sugar, clarified butter, nuts, and milk evaporated to a fudge-like consistency. The resultant profusion of laddus, barfis, halvah, kachoris, puris, and other goodies are consumed by families at home and widely shared with friends, neighbors, and colleagues. See barfi; halvah; and laddu. The custom of visiting people and bringing brightly wrapped boxes of sweets is witnessed in every city and town. The professional confectioners are equally busy, churning out their specialties and creating displays that are appealing to both eye and tongue.

One of the most indulgent festive comestibles is puran poli, a flatbread stuffed with a sweetened mixture of chickpea flour and pigeon-pea flour, fragrant with cardamom, rosewater, and kewra (screwpine) flower water. See flower waters and pandanus. The bread is fried in clarified butter and often dipped in warm, melted butter before eating. The mawa kachori is another seasonal stuffed treat, the filling made of solidified evaporated milk and chopped nuts. Another Diwali favorite is the balushahi, a richer, melting-in-the-mouth incarnation of a doughnut, emitting the aroma of clarified butter and gilded with festive silver foil. Among the laddus—round balls made with sweetened besan and aromatic spices—motichoor laddu is a particularly delectable version often served at Diwali. Tiny balls of besan dough are fried in clarified butter, dipped in syrup, and once cooled, formed into larger balls (sometimes with the addition of blanched almonds or pistachios) that are often decorated with edible silver foil.

In southern India, the same ingredients are used with a different culinary sensibility to create sweets for festive occasions like Diwali. Laddus, made with roasted besan, sugar, and prolific amounts of clarified butter, go by the name of maladu, maavu laddu, or pottukadalai. Susiyam, similar to puran poli, is made in the rounded shape of a laddu instead of a flatbread. The filling, consisting of cooked chickpeas (or Bengal gram), coconut, brown sugar, and toasted nuts, is stuffed inside a flour shell, shaped into a ball, and fried in coconut oil or clarified butter.

Milk plays the star role in items like rice pudding and a yogurt cheese called shrikhand. In eastern India, the traditional Bengali items such as sandesh, made with chana (or channa) or fresh curd cheese, also appear on the menu for Diwali. See sandesh. Although Bengalis celebrate Kali Puja during Diwali, that presents no obstacle to their indulging in the lipid-rich laddus, barfis, and halvah that are so common in the northern and western parts of India.

See also fried dough; india; kolkata; and mithai.

Achaya, K. T. Indian Food. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Banerji, Chitrita. Eating India. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.

Krondl, Michael. Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011.

Chitrita Banerji

Dobos torte, pronounced doboshe, is Hungary’s most iconic layer cake, a round cake consisting of six thin, buttery, sponge cake layers, five layers of chocolate buttercream, and a layer of hardened caramel covering the top. See caramels and sponge cake. The top caramel layer is cut into individual slices (with a special Dobos torte knife) before it hardens, and those pieces are arranged on top of the cake. Dobos torte is served in nearly every cukrászda (patisserie) in the country.

Although Dobos torte is often mistranslated as “drum cake” (the Hungarian dob means “drum”), it is in fact named after its inventor, József Dobos (1847–1924), a baker, chef, prolific cookbook author, caterer, and culinary entrepreneur who came from a family of cooks going back generations. In 1878 Dobos opened a specialty gourmet shop in central Pest that sold an array of high-quality local foods and imported delicacies such as cheese, wine, caviar, and spices. The shop was known for its elaborate window displays and house-made products. Dobos’s most important creation was his namesake cake.

The Dobos torte debuted in 1885 at the National General Exhibition in Budapest, where Dobos presided over an elegant pavilion staffed by more than 100 people. Queen Elisabeth and Emperor Franz Joseph were among the crowd who visited his pavilion. “Those present cheered the royal couple, who were served personally by Dobos himself, writes Tibor Éliás in his book Dobos and 19th Century Confectionery in Hungary (2010). “They of course also tasted the latest novelty, after which another royal cheer erupted—this time in honor of the creator of the cake” (p. 87). Afterwards, Dobos was made a purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court.

The Dobos torte “was born as a result of continuous experimentation on the part of the ever creative Dobos,” writes Éliás. The cake became a sensation not only in Budapest, but also throughout much of Europe, for several reasons. Unlike the other, more intricately decorated European cakes of the time, the Dobos torte, with its flat, shiny, unadorned caramel top, looked downright minimalist. The chocolate buttercream spread between the cake layers was also a new concept, and it became Dobos’s signature (and secret) ingredient. Both the buttercream and hard caramel were innovations that gave the cake a significantly longer shelf life, with no need for refrigeration. Dobos brought his cakes with him during his frequent travels in Europe, and shipping the cakes throughout the continent became an important part of his business. He designed special wooden boxes to keep the cakes cool and perfectly intact during their journey. The Dobos torte was regularly served at social events throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During Dobos’s time, his cake was much imitated by other patissiers in Budapest, but never successfully. Bakers did not figure out that cocoa butter was the secret ingredient in Dobos’s smooth chocolate buttercream. Tired of all the bad imitations of his cake, Dobos donated his recipe to the Pastry and Honey-bread Makers’ Guild in 1906 so that all pastry chefs would have access to the true recipe. Soon afterward, Dobos closed his shop. Despite his success, Dobos’s life did not have a happy ending. He lost most of his fortune, which he had invested in war bonds, during World War I.

The Dobos torte is as popular as ever in Hungary today—and also in Austria and other countries that were part of the empire—but it is rarely prepared at home because it is so labor intensive. The Dobos torte (often written phonetically as Dobosh torte outside of Hungary) has also inspired cakes as far away as the United States. In New Orleans the Doberge cake is a layer cake usually filled with chocolate and lemon pudding and covered in buttercream or fondant. See fondant. In Hawaii the popular Dobash cake is a chocolate chiffon cake with a chocolate pudding or Chantilly cream filling. Though many Hungarian pastry shops prepare the Dobos in its classic form, modern bakeries also experiment and create versions that would have been unrecognizable to József Dobos. In Hungary, however, no matter how experimental a pastry chef gets with his or her Dobos torte, chocolate and caramel are always present. Even today, it feels like a little luxury to sit down with a slice of elegant Dobos torte.

See also austria-hungary; cake; layer cake; new orleans; and torte.

Éliás, Tibor, and Katalin Csapó. Dobos and 19th Century Confectionery in Hungary. Budapest: Hungarian Museum of Trace and Tourism, 2010.

Carolyn Bánfalvi

Dolly Varden cake, a layer cake in the shape of a doll, inspires recollections of childhood whimsy. It has a long history within popular culture. Dolly Varden first appeared as a character in Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (1842). Described as a pretty, charming coquette, Dolly inspired fanciful portraits of her dressed in a cherry mantle and straw hat with red ribbons. All types of dedications to her followed, including flowered fabrics, parasols, paper dolls, dances, an amusing song, and even an iridescent trout. In the 1870s a fashion craze swept through London and New York, with Harper’s Bazaar featuring “Dolly Varden Costumes”—flowered dresses with wide, bustled skirts.

Inspired by these colorful and multilayered dresses, admirers devised the Dolly Varden cake. In Australia, various recipes began to appear in the 1880s, and by around 1910 the recipe had become fairly standardized. It traditionally calls for a simple butter cake (butter, flour, sugar, a leavening agent, and eggs), sometimes flavored with lemon essence, split into two layers (or three, depending on the version of the recipe). This mixture is divided into two (or three parts) and one half is baked as is, with dried fruits and spices (raisins, cherries, currants, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg) mixed into the other. The cakes are stacked and joined together with a jam, icing, or a vanilla-flavored buttercream filling, creating a tiered result when the cake is cut and eaten. During the Depression years of the 1930s, when there was a scarcity of ingredients, many cookbooks contained an altered recipe for the cake that called for less fruit, spice, milk, and eggs, and with dripping (rendered animal fat) as a substitute for the butter.

As the recipe evolved to suit contemporary tastes and baking practices, modern ingredients like Maraschino cherries, cardamom, citron, walnuts, and coconut were added to the mix. In response to a craze for cake decorating among home cooks in the 1940s and 1950s, a new shape appeared in Australia and New Zealand alongside the tiered original—a rounded cake baked in a pudding tin. See cake decorating. The cake remained a novelty until the 1970s, when, possibly due to the popularity of the Barbie doll, a special Dolly Varden cake tin was manufactured and sold with decorative designs and instructions for crafting a dramatic cake. The deep tin formed Dolly’s “dress,” which encased an actual plastic doll placed in the center, usually a favorite of the child. The recipe showed how to use the doll, and instructed either removing the legs or carving out a hole at the center of the cake to accommodate its length.

Dolly Varden cake became irrevocably tied to birthday celebrations, though it was often relabeled. For instance, the Betty Crocker version of the cake is called “Fairy Tale Princess Cake,” and cookbook recipes variously label it “Dolly Cake,” “Princess Doll Cake,” or “Barbie Cake.” The cake continued to evolve to reflect popular trends and fashion fads, with most recipes from the 1980s onward recommending a cake mix as a quick alternative to allow more time for intricate decoration of the “dress.”

While the original magic of Dolly Varden may have waned, the cake now serves as a springboard for the imagination, bringing delight to successive generations.

Cedro, Carmel. “Dolly Varden: Sweet Inspiration.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2, no. 1 (2013): 37–46.

“Dolly Varden House Dress.” Harper’s Bazaar. New York Public Library Digital Gallery. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?803737 (accessed 15 September 2014).

Humble, Nicola. Cake: A Global History. London: Reaktion, 2010.

Carmel Cedro

doughnuts are fried, doughy pastries leavened with yeast or chemical leaveners. They are found in myriad forms, shapes, and manifestations in almost every culture that has discovered the joys of fried food. In Alpine Tyrol, yeast-raised rounds are filled with preserves or cream; in New Orleans, sugar-dusted squares are a perfect partner for chicory-laced coffee. New Englanders have cider-scented dough circles and East Asians enjoy chewy pon de rings. See fried dough and fritters.

Perhaps the first reference to a doughnut-like pastry comes from Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophists (third century c.e.). Enkrides is “a small pastry deep-fried in olive oil and covered with honey afterward,” he writes, a description that could easily apply to current Greek loukomades, though whether they were yeast-raised, as they are now, is anybody’s guess. See athenaeus. Doughnut predecessors also pop up in the medieval Muslim sources. Zalabia (the spelling varies) and luqmat al-qadi sometimes took the form of yeast-raised lumps of dough, as they do today. Morocco’s doughnut-shaped sfenj have a clear ancestor in a recipe for isfunj found in an anonymous thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook. See middle east; north africa; and zalabiya.

European Doughnuts

Most European countries have some version of a doughnut, which is typically associated with Carnival. See carnival. In Venice, fritelle di carnevale are fried dough balls enriched with dried fruit and spices. To make Lyons’s sugar-dusted bugne, a yeast dough is tied in a knot. In Spain, rosquillas de anis are doughnut-shaped and flavored with anisette.

In Central Europe, Krapfen (one of many terms for a jelly doughnut) are documented as early as the thirteenth-century epic Parzifal. The fourteenth-century cookbook Das Buch von guter speise includes four recipes for fillings—all based on spiced apples—though none for the dough. A hundred years later, a Czech manuscript cookbook suggests a stuffing of figs, stewed pears, peaches, and sour cherries. Other sources recommend meat, fish, and vegetables. In Vienna, an ordinance from 1486 makes clear that the city was already supplied by professional doughnut bakers. By the late eighteenth century, jam-filled doughnuts were commonplace but, due to the cost of sugar, were expensive and accordingly not out of place at the fanciest occasions. According to contemporary press accounts, some 10 million Krapfen were served to the attendees of the Congress of Vienna during the 1815 carnival season alone. Today, jelly doughnuts are ubiquitous across Central Europe under an assortment of regional names and with a variety of fillings that may include jam, fruit butter, custard, chocolate, or liqueur-spiked cream. Israelis have adapted the carnival doughnut tradition for Hanukkah, serving jelly doughnuts (renamed sufganyiot) for the Festival of Lights. See hanukkah.

Early American Doughnuts

Parts of England, too, had a tradition of serving fritters for Shrove Tuesday, although most did not resemble anything we would call a doughnut. The one exception comes from Hertfordshire. William Ellis gives a recipe for these Hertfordshire Cakes, Nuts and Pincussions as early as 1750 in The Country Housewife’s Family Companion, noting that they are made by shaping a yeast dough in the shape of walnuts. A little later in the century, a manuscript cookbook compiled by Baroness Elizabeth Dimsdale actually calls them “dow nuts.” It is reasonable to assume that the New England settlers, many of whom traced their origin to precisely this part of England, brought the name and recipe with them, although as Puritans, they left behind any Carnival association.

In the New World, these fried dough balls were served year-round for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Writers reminisce about eating the fried treats during the Revolutionary era; soldiers were feted with doughnuts before being sent to war. Even New England whalers, far from home, fried doughnuts in rendered whale blubber.

Noah Webster defined the doughnut as a “small roundish cake, made of flour, eggs and sugar, moistened with milk and boiled in lard” in his 1828 dictionary. The earliest American recipe for “Dough Nuts,” inserted into an addendum to Susanna Carter’s Frugal Housewife in 1802, does not specify the shape, but later recipes suggest that the “nuts” were made by rolling out the dough and cutting it into small squares or circles. The eventual torus shape seems to have been modeled on the jumble (a popular ring-shaped cookie) or possibly crullers, which were often twisted into a ring. In 1846 Mrs. Abell instructs the reader of her Skillful Housewife’s Book to cut her “fried cakes” (basically cake doughnuts) as one would jumbles. Nonetheless, some 70 years later, a retired Maine captain named Hanson Gregory claimed that he had invented the holey doughnut in 1847. His was a delightfully improbable sailor’s yarn, but it proved remarkably sticky for decades to come.

Ever in a hurry, Americans began to substitute chemical leaveners for yeast at least as early as 1829, when Lydia Maria Child included a recipe for pearlash-raised doughnuts in her best-selling Frugal Housewife. Later cookbooks would frequently include both so-called raised (yeast) and cake (chemically leaved) doughnuts, the relative merits of each being a point of contention even today. See chemical leaveners.

Of course, New Englanders were not the only Americans to fry dough. During the nineteenth century, the ethnic fry-cake traditions of the Dutch, German, and French settlers began to hybridize with the Anglo-American practice. Mrs. Abell suggests adding raisins and currants to dough nuts to turn them into “New York Oley Koeks,” her spelling of Dutch oliekoeks; some Pennsylvania Dutch families began using baking powder to make pre-Lenten fastnachts (similar to Krapfen); and in Louisiana, French and German traditions blended to create the beignet (not to be confused with the many varied beignets found across France). See pennsylvania dutch.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, doughnuts had become commonplace from Maine to Alaska; to many Americans, the homely pastries connoted a kind of wholesome domesticity. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Salvation Army volunteers began to make the fried rings (alongside pies) as a way of boosting morale at the front. One Army lassie (as the young women were called) wrote, “Invariably the boys would begin to talk about home and mother while they were eating the doughnuts.” Subsequent to the war, the Salvation Army used doughnuts to promote its cause, issuing posters that featured the lassies holding armfuls of “sinkers,” condoning such Tin Pan Alley songs as “My Doughnut Girl,” and even participating in the production of Fires of Faith, a mildly sensationalist Hollywood melodrama.

During World War II, the doughnut challenge was taken up by the Red Cross. Driven and operated by young women volunteers, retrofitted trucks were outfitted with gramophones, American cigarettes, magazines, and, most important, automatic doughnut frying machines. These “Clubmobiles” followed the advancing army through France, Italy, and right into Germany, often at enormous risk. Once the European war was won, returning GIs were often held for weeks in huge tent cities. At one camp, near Reims, as reported by the New York Times, the soldiers downed a million cups of coffee and a half-million doughnuts each day. Once they returned home, a small number of veterans opened up doughnut shops of their own with the help of the GI bill.

Increasingly doughnuts, and doughnut shops, came to be associated with working-class Americans, not least a cartoon nuclear-plant worker named Homer Simpson. Before the advent of 24-hour fast-food chains, doughnut shops were one of the few places a factory worker or a cop on an early shift could grab some breakfast. William Rosenberg, the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, actively encouraged the police presence, figuring it would cut down on crime. Ever since, cops have been closely associated with doughnuts in the American imagination. The word “doughnut,” due to its shape, has also picked up a host of secondary meanings, from a spare tire, to a maneuver made by an automobile, to a variety of sexual and sexual orientation slang that references the hole. See sexual innuendo and slang.

Doughnut Chains

Following World War I and piggybacking on the sinker’s new celebrity, several entrepreneurs made a stab at mechanizing the doughnut-making process. The most successful by far was Adolf Levitt, a Russian immigrant who founded the Doughnut Corporation of America. His doughnut-making gizmo, which made its debut in 1920, and accompanying proprietary mix eventually came to dominate the commercial bakery market. Levitt publicized October as doughnut month (doughnuts were a favorite Halloween treat) and sponsored the National Dunking Association. In 1940 the Association boasted 3 million members, including actor Zero Mostel, future television host Johnny Carson, and even choreographer Martha Graham. Levitt’s Mayflower shops were the first national doughnut chain.

Following Levitt’s lead, several doughnut businessmen succeeded in creating regional, and then national, doughnut chains. Shipley Do-Nuts originated in Houston, Texas, in 1936; Krispy Kreme was founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1937; Winchell’s in Temple City, California, in 1948; Dunkin’ Donuts in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1950; and Tim Hortons in Hamilton, Canada, in 1964. Several of these shops have expanded internationally, especially into the Middle East and East Asia. See canada; dunkin’ donuts; and krispy kreme.

Starting in 1994, doughnuts began to get a gourmet makeover when, in Napa Valley, the celebrated chef Thomas Keller put a doughnut on the menu of the French Laundry. The same year, Mark Israel opened up a shop on New York City’s Lower East Side using organic flour and glazing his yeasty rings with floral essence, passion fruit, and other outré flavors. Trendy restaurants followed suit, and by the first decade of the twenty-first century, fancy doughnut shops from coast to coast featured wacky flavors such as bacon maple, pumpkin spice latte, and Mexican mole, to say nothing of toppings ranging from Oreos to pulled pork and potato salad. In 2013 New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel made a splash with his trademarked but also widely copied “cronut,” a fried ring of croissant dough filled with custard cream. Who could have guessed that people would stand in line for three hours for a fried lump of dough?

Abell, L. G. The Skilful Housewife’s Book, or, Complete Guide to Domestic Cookery, Taste, Comfort, and Economy: Embracing 659 Receipts Pertaining to Household Duties, Gardening, Flowers, Birds, Plants, etc. New York: D. Newell, 1846.

Dimsdale, Elizabeth, and Heather Falvey. The Receipt Book of Baroness Elizabeth Dimsdale, c. 1800. Rickmansworth, U.K.: Hertfordshire Record Society, 2013.

Krondl, Michael. The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014.

Mann, Ludwig. “Krapfen.” Traditionelle Lebensmittel in Österreich. 14 December 2009. http://www.bmlfuw.gv.at/land/lebensmittel/trad-lebensmittel/speisen/krapfen.html

Michael Krondl

dragées

See sprinkles.

dried fruit is a term that broadly covers any kind of fruit preserved by desiccation. In the context of baking derived from traditional British practice, however, the term is more specific, indicating dried vine fruit, sometimes mixed with small dice of candied peel. See candied fruit. Dried fruit, in general, plays numerous roles in sweets, including direct use as snack food, as a component of confectionery items like energy bars, and as a dominant ingredient in rich fruitcake. See fruitcake. Over a million tons of dried vine fruits are produced annually. Apricots, prunes, and figs are also dried and traded in substantial quantities; dates are the most important in global terms. See dates.

Dried fruits are mentioned in ancient texts such as Apicius, the first comprehensive cookbook dating from the late Roman period. Their primary role was as a sweetener alongside honey and wine in a range of savory dishes. See honey. They became more significant in sweet dishes by the medieval period while still adding sweetness to savory foods. This role survives in Middle Eastern cuisines, for example, the use of dried apricots in mishmishiya, a lamb stew from Arabia and Iran. See middle east and persia.

The traditional method of preparation is by sun drying, but this practice is being replaced by industrial processes to cope with demand, and also to produce a uniform product for mass marketing. Dried fruits store well, making them ideal for transport and trade. Their concentrated flavor and sugar content (sugars dominate their composition, ranging from 60 percent in apricots, prunes, and figs to nearly 80 percent in vine fruit) made dried fruits a sought-after commodity centuries ago when sugar was expensive, and they continue to be appreciated for their own textures and flavors, which are distinct from those of fresh fruit.

Vine Fruits

Vine fruits are derived from fresh grapes and have a long history in production, trade, and culinary use. In ideal conditions the fruit of Vitis vinifera will desiccate naturally on the vine and would have been gathered in prehistory before being developed and cultivated as a major trade item. Production and export are now dominated by Turkey and the United Sates, which account for half the world trade. The market demand for vine fruits has become very diverse, reflecting the globalization of baked goods and confectionery that often rely on them for their character.

Vine fruits are divided into three main groups. Raisins derive their name from the Roman word racemus, meaning a “bunch of fruit.” They are generally the largest of the vine fruits and vary in color from brown to dark red. Sultanas were associated with the Ottoman Empire. They are generally pale yellow in color but can shade to green or gold. Currants are named after their medieval association with the Greek town of Corinth. The smallest of the fruits, they have a blue-black hue. Seedless vine fruit are now readily available, a great benefit for all bakers and makers of sweets, as stoning raisins was a sticky, much disliked kitchen chore. A single type of vine fruit, such as the currants used in traditional British Eccles cakes and Garibaldi biscuits, can give essential character to a particular baked good. More generally, a selection of vine fruits in baking provides immediate visual appeal but yields only modest flavor.

Other Dried Fruits

Other dried fruits include dried apricots prepared from the fruit of Prunus armeniaca, which can retain some of the character of the fresh fruit, particularly its color (especially when treated with sulfur dioxide). Three-quarters of the world’s dried apricot crop is produced and exported by Turkey. A very different variety from the Hunza valley in Pakistan is dried on the trees and looks like a shriveled brown nut, but when cooked, it reveals an intense flavor. Dried apricots are a versatile ingredient that lends intense flavor and golden color to compotes, cheesecakes, cookies, cakes, and specialty breads, such as apricot couronne.

Prunes are the dried fruit of the plum tree Prunus domestica. The best-known variety is the pruneau d’Agen from France, with an aroma of almond. Although used in savory dishes such as tagines, prunes also have a role in baked goods, such as the far Breton, the signature dish of Brittany in which Armagnac-soaked prunes stud a thick batter cake.

Figs, principally the fruit of Ficus carica but occasionally of other species, are an important dried fruit crop in Turkey. Often called Smyrna figs, recalling their main port of export in Turkey (now called Izmir), they are made into incir tatlisi, a family of desserts made by rehydrating the dried fruit and stuffing them with walnuts and cream. Iran is also a major producer; their export fruits are of a smaller size. Figs were an important ingredient in medieval European food, for example, in the deep-fried fig pastries called tourteletes in fryture, described in the fourteenth-century Forme of Cury cookbook.

Apples are also dried to preserve the nutritional value of this highly perishable fruit. They find uses in confectionery and baking. Mulberries and sour cherries are dried on a modest scale from Turkey to Afghanistan for use as sweets and in compotes and baking.

Some more tropical soft-fleshed fruits are also dried. The smaller varieties of bananas are sun-dried whole to a soft, sticky consistency with a toffee-like flavor, very different from the hard banana chips now used in some baked goods. Sun-drying items such as mango slices is still carried out in a traditional manner in certain places, but tropical fruits like mangos and papayas are also processed into a form of candied fruit more acceptable to the tastes of the industrialized world.

Sun-Maid Growers of California. Raisins & Dried Fruit: Serving the World Since 1912. New York: DK Publishing, 2011. http://www.sunmaid.com/book (accessed 28 May 2014).

Phil Iddison

drop cookies are made by dropping cookie dough onto a baking pan from spoons or scoops, or by rolling dough into balls by hand and placing them on the pan. This method helps to produce uniform size and shape. Drop cookies are the most common type of cookie made because they are so easy to prepare. Flavors include chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter. However, the variety of recipes is endless.

The most well-known drop cookie is the chocolate chip cookie, first developed in 1934 by Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. Mrs. Wakefield was an outstanding restaurateur and skillful chef. One day she cut a bar of chocolate into bit-size pieces and added them to one of her cookie recipes. The resulting cookies were so popular that they came to be served at the end of each meal at the inn. Soon the recipe was published in a Boston newspaper; it was called the Toll House Cookie. Mrs. Wakefield entered into an agreement with Nestlé that allowed it to print her recipe on their semi-sweet chocolate bars and then on bags of chocolate chips. See nestlé. During World War II, GIs stationed overseas welcomed packages of Toll House Cookies from their families.

The most common flour used in drop cookies is all-purpose, a medium-protein content flour, which gives the cookies a good framework. Softer flours and starches, such as rice flour, cornstarch, oats, and cornmeal, are used to give different textures and flavors. Cake and pastry flours offer a finer texture and crumb.

A high percentage of solid fat forms the base of most drop cookies. It makes a somewhat soft dough that is easy to shape and that spreads nicely when properly baked. Butter is preferred for its maximum flavor and balanced taste. Liquid oils can be used in drop cookies, especially in vegan recipes. Usually, the fat is used at room temperature for even and quick aerating when beaten.

When all-purpose flour is used, the fat is creamed with the sugar only until smooth. When using softer flours and starches, all the ingredients are combined with the room-temperature fat and mixed until a smooth dough forms. Mexican wedding cookies are made using this method. With either method the dough should never be overmixed, as this could result in a tough dough or a weakened structure caused by overheating from the friction of mixing.

Cookie sheets should be lightly oiled or lined with parchment paper. The cookies should be spaced 2 or more inches apart to allow them room to spread; a crowded tray will not allow the heat to flow evenly. The cookie sheets should be positioned on the middle oven racks and rotated at least once from front to back for even baking and coloring. The cookies bake for 8 to 14 minutes at a temperature between 325°F and 375°F (163°C and 191°C).

Cookies should be cooled on the pan that is placed on a rack for even cooling. Placing them on a flat counter surface will trap the heat on the bottom, causing the bottoms to overcook; it could also create a vacuum that might generate steam and make the cookies soggy. Once completely cooled, the cookies may be stored in an airtight, covered container to preserve flavor and texture.

See also butter; flour; pressed cookies; and rolled cookies.

Amendola, Joseph. Understanding Baking. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.

Corriher, Shirley O. Bake Wise. New York: Scribner, 2008.

Jim Dodge

dulce de leche, literally “sweet of milk,” is a caramel-flavored syrup made by boiling down milk with added sugar. It is found in various forms across Latin America: cajeta in Mexico (from the small wooden boxes in which it was traditionally sold), manjar (“delicacy”) in Peru and Chile, doce de leite in Brazil, and arequipe in Colombia. If further boiled down, dulce de leche gives rise to fudgy confections (jamoncillo being one of the Mexican varieties). Although artisanal production continues, today homemade dulce de leche is more likely to result from simmering a can of condensed milk for several hours. Industrially produced versions are widely sold.

Dulce de leche may be eaten as is, spread on bread or crackers, or used as an ingredient in ice cream, tres leches cake, or as a filling in crepes. See tres leches cake. In southern Latin America, it is sandwiched between cookies to make the very popular alfajores. Beginning in the 1990s, dulce de leche became popular in the United States and Europe in ice cream, tres leches cake, and banoffee pie (pastry or cookie crust filled with dulce de leche, cream, and banana, very popular in the United Kingdom since the 1970s).

The origins of milk sweets are unclear. Although today they occasionally crop up in Europe as confiture du lait (milk jam) in France or fudgy confections in Central Europe, they do not appear to have been part of the sweet repertoire of the Iberian empires. Dulce de leche, however, is found in the Philippines, and milk sweets are central to Hindu cuisine, raising the possibility that the technique was introduced to Latin America by passengers on the Spanish galleons that sailed between Mexico and the Philippines from 1565 to 1815.