SWEET! Desserts

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to exhibit at a trade show in Vegas SHOT SHOW- (Shooting – Hunting- Outdoor – Tactical), joining 65,000+ others. We do a lot of PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs! work in this field, processing various knives, components for wonderful customers (thank you!!). As many do when in Vegas, we had an evening out on the town, and I found myself holding a dessert menu after polishing off a wonderful meal with my team. I passed, but did take note of the habit of finishing a satisfying meal with a sweet dessert – a culinary tradition that many people follow. While some may elect to eat sweets before or in between courses (think lemon ice YUM!), while others simply dig into pie or brownies at any time of the day (Jackie knows to never leave the pie out), most adhere to the standard operating procedure of dessert after the main course. I decided to dig a bit and learn more about how and when this food order came about. (I heard about a guy who always ate his dessert first – his logic was, he loved dessert so much, he didn’t want to be full afterwards and not savor the experience (Brilliant!). So, here’s some history and trivia about the tradition – (pass the fudge topping please). Thanks to historyfacts.com and tastingtable.com for the insights. Enjoy!

By popular demand, we’re now sharing guides for the previous week’s logo contest!

Every Friday, scroll to the bottom of the post to review last week’s guide and see if we managed to stump you. 

To start somewhere close to the beginning, the craving for sweets is of course biological. Our hominid ancestors realized they derived more energy from ripe fruit with a higher sugar content than unripe fruit, and humans evolved with a hardwiring that connected sweetness to pleasurable feelings. This primal need perhaps explains why sweets have traditionally featured into religious ceremonies for many cultures (Jackie – I can’t help it, it’s biological!!). Think of cavemen chasing beehives.

As described in Michael Krondl’s Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert, Mesopotamian cooks prepared cakes as an offering to the goddess Ishtar. Similarly, Hindus throughout India have presented a sugar and milk concoction known as pedha to deities such as Kali for more than two millennia.

Of course, the preparation and consumption of sweets has long been a part of secular mealtimes as well. The Deipnosophists, a work from the third-century Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratis, describes an array of honey-coated fare served over a series of lavish banquets. (I think my Greek name would have been Stephenius Geradius Kowalskieus – nice!)

Per dictionary definition, a dessert is served to conclude a meal, not just a standalone sweet treat. The name comes by way of France, first found in print in 1539. It’s a conjugation of the word “desservir”, meaning “to clear the table” in English. Etiquette dictated that napkins and tablecloths be changed before the final course, which at the time was a delicate fruit course. In a courtly context, the course itself was known as “le fruit,” but the bourgeois renamed it “dessert.” After the French Revolution, the aristocratic “fruit” was fully replaced by “dessert.”

In the dessert-heavy cuisines of Anatolia (now Turkey), people have been consuming a sweet pudding called ashure — also known as Noah’s Pudding — since the early days of Christianity, lending it the moniker of world’s oldest dessert.

A standalone dish, which is basically our modern idea of a dessert, came about in the 17th-century. Its first appearance in print is attributed to food writer François Pierre La Varenne, who advocated for the separation of sweet and savory. Chefs started crafting elaborate sculptures from sugar to visually flaunt sweet foods. 

The ancient pistachio pastry katmer, as well as variations of baklava and lokum, which have origins dating to around the 15th centuries are not strictly intertwined with a post-dinner meal. These dishes have been enjoyed as a conclusion to Ramadan meals for centuries, lending them a dessert-like status that developed in parallel to European traditions.

There may be a biological component having to do with desserts and digestion. Consuming fatty and sugar-rich foods can be strenuous on an empty stomach, (Pop Tarts in the morning?) making it favorable to eat something first. We’re predisposed to sugary bites being ever-so-tempting, so it’s also easier to indulge on dessert once we’re full. (I know this, but I do it anyway.)

Slowly, though, the flavor of desserts became less important than their visual presentation. The dessert course might consist of elegant metal and glass structures holding whole apples or plums. Other times, meticulously crafted sugar figures became the center of dessert displays and might not be eaten at all. Dessert specialists in the eighteenth century were supposed to understand architectural design and be capable of replicating it in sugar paste. (I think I’d 3D print mine today!)

History describes one such artisan who crafted the severed head of Louis XV, a battle scene with soldiers and cannons, and the rock of Gibraltar out of sugar, all of it edible, but one can hardly imagine a dinner guest nibbling on a sugar soldier head… (who wants the ears?).

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, technology and trade also opened up more possibilities for populist sweets. Sugar was more widely available, and mechanical refrigeration could keep butter at a consistent temperature, making pastry simpler. 

Banquets might still feature visually sensational desserts—like the three-tier, castle-shaped cake with lakes of jam and hazelnut boats described in Madame Bovary—but the guests actually ate this art. By the late nineteenth century, attractive and delicious desserts like almond cakes, cream puffs, and fruit tarts were a minor luxury available as a special treat even to the lower classes. (I’m in!!)

The dessert category in the United States is large and growing, with the frozen dessert market expected to grow to over $50 billion by 2032. The dessert stores market is also expected to grow to over $20 billion in 2025.

Top restaurant desserts are ice cream, cake, pie, cookies, cheesecake and brownies. In 2023, the United States produced 1.3 billion gallons of ice cream – enough for the average American to eat about 20 pounds of ice cream each year. Now if you divide that by the average weight of a scoop of ice cream – 4 ounces, this would average out to be only 1.58846154 scoops a week. See, it’s all a matter of perspective!  

 More ice cream for me!

How did you do on last week’s logo contest?

Check out our logo guide for the “NASA Marvels” post here!