Desserts

Definitions

Dessert

1. To clear the table; French
2. Fresh Fruit as a last course of the meal;
3. British Something sweet served after the last meal of the day and all of the plates and silverware from the last meal of the day have been cleared away.

Trying to discover the beginning of desserts is guesswork at best, since I couldn't find anything written or even referred to anywhere I looked.

Given that situation my guess would be that the first use of having something sweet to end off a meal would have started with the Neanderthal people and would have been something simple like an apple or a few grapes.


Coming up the line, the Chinese would be my next best guess, with India right there as well, due to the fact that their meal usually has several different and distinct tastes.

So ending off with something like Tong Shuie (sugar water) also known as Sweet Soup, would not be a bad guess.

What is clear is that everywhere I looked I did not find even one society that didn't have something sweet used as a dessert. Even in the Arctic where a dish called Akutaq which means "something mixed", and consisted of various berries mixed with fat from seals and/or walrus, into a sweet paste, was part of their diet as well.

It is also certain that wheat flour plays a major part in not only present time desserts but in ancient times as well; an example would be the Khanom Bu-ang of Thailand, crispy pancakes spread with coconut cream, folded over and shredded coconut added.

There are toppings other than coconut but the above is the ancient one, so ancient in fact it was used in exclusively in religious ceremony.

Mochi: (rice cake), where the cooked rice is pounded into a paste and then formed into whatever shape you like, but usually rectangular.

Mochi has a subtle sweet taste but to the Western tongue the taste may be perceived as bland due to the large amount of sugar in Western desserts.

These rice cakes are prepared and eaten year round but take on a special role for traditional holidays in Japan, especially New Years day.

Another Japanese dessert called hama-biri mocha translates to "flower petal mochi" dates back to the mid 1800s. Mochi flavored ice cream is also a popular dessert in Japan.

In India, due to the fact that Sugar Cane has been cultivated for 3000 years, desserts are an important part of the Indian diet.

One such, called Halva, is prepared in two ways: the first is flour based and the second way is nut based, mixed into a butter. Peanut butter is an example of this. The flour based is fried in a sugary syrup.

The vastly more interesting thing about Halva is that it is prepared under different names and some added ingredients in 33 countries.

There is even a Star named after it called 518 Halawe.

In the upcoming posts I will be concentrating on desserts common to the Americas, Mexico and Canada.

Dad.