Sweet Invention

August 8, 2011
A food historian and former chef, Krondl (The Taste of Conquest), combines copious research and skilled narrative in this delightful journey through the history of dessert. “When you talk about dessert you step away from analyzing basic human needs to a conversation about culture,” Krondl writes. He begins his narrative in India, “because of its national obsession with dessert.” Krondl then explores the habits and sweet predilections of the Middle East, Italy, France, Austria, and the U.S. Along this sugar-studded route, readers learn how at one time in France sugar was mainly used to season fish and was used as an additive to foods intended for invalids; why Paris confectioners tried rescuing Marie Antoinette from the guillotine; and why Austrians are the “maestros of cake.” For those who want to indulge in more backstory, Krondl provides entertaining footnotes, a few recipes, and an extensive bibliography for further investigation.

August 1, 2011

Czech-born artist, cooking instructor, and food writer Krondl dabbles in the origin of various common and uncommon sweet foods, such as cupcakes, doughnuts, and baklava. As in his earlier The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice, he interviews European, Indian, and American chefs and scours the digitized collections of various libraries to gather sociocultural and culinary tidbits related to food trends. Early on, he admits his fascination and curiosity with the interplay of these multifaceted issues, yet he attempts to cover too much--from fructose to fruitcake. The loose and chatty text, together with its pretentious tone, becomes difficult to comprehend. VERDICT Interested readers and pastry chefs might prefer Ann Amernick's The Art of the Dessert. The many individual strands of this interesting topic deserve a more focused treatment similar in caliber to culinary historian Michael Symons's A History of Cooks and Cooking.--Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
The world divides roughly into two camps: those who believe that a meal exists as a prelude to dessert, and those who believe that dessert is the meal. As Krondl points out in this exhaustive and enlightening history of desserts, babies come into the world genetically wired to find oral pleasure from sweet tastes, and their brains never really outgrow the drive to satisfy that craving. The production of sugar from sugar cane made today's notion of sweets possible and shaped society, government, and economics through its reliance on slavery. Italy, France, and Austria in particular married sugar, butter, and flour and thus developed the art of pastry-making, from simple biscotti through elaborations as varied as Sacher torte and profiteroles. Krondl also traces the history of ice cream and Eastern European and Asian sweets such as baklava, and he plumbs the origins of American apple pie. A few recipes are included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)