History of Desserts

I wonder how ecstatic the inventor of the first dessert must have been when he tasted it. The Western World was not introduced to desserts until the Middle Ages because sugar was not yet manufactured. Before that, the first dessert was a crusty mixture of honeycomb and dried dates. People enjoyed fruits and nuts candied with honey. In fact, the first extraction and refining of cane sugar was in India, in around 300 A.D (Powers, 2011).  

Ice Cream

Ice cream was one of the first actual "desserts". Actually, it was just flavored ice that was invented by the Chinese around 3000 B.C., and Marco Polo brought the technique to Europe. This led to the first sherbet (frozen fruit juice with added milk, cream, egg white, or gelatin) by Catherine de Medici (Delp). 

(Cabrera, 2010)

Vanilla

Vanilla is actually a substance obtained from vanilla beans found prominently in Mexico. Somehow the natives figured out that if you picked and "sweated" the pods, you would get vanillin, the famous fragrance in vanilla (Delp).

(CaFleureBon, 2012)

Filo Dough

I'm actually surprised that filo dough was invented so early as the 1300's. The thin pastry-paper was filled with nuts and fruits. Notice that baklava is very similar (Delp).

(Lynch, 2008)

Chocolate

Chocolate is made from the fruits of a cocoa tree, mostly located in Central America. For centuries, people drank chocolate rather than eating it as early as the 1,500 B.C. After the Spanish conquered Central America, they took the cocoa beans to Spain and drank them with hot water, and added and stirred sugar to make it sweeter, which made it foamy. In the late 17th Century, people began drinking it with milk to make the taste better. By 1674, England was eating chocolate as a food (Lambert).

(Delp, n.d.a.)

Sources:

Cabrera (2010, March 22). A Food Blog: Sherbet vs. Sherbert. Retrieved from http://onedaycafe.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/sherbet-vs-sherbert/


CaFleureBon (2012, January 3). Vanilla and Chocolate Notes in Perfumery + Baby It's Cold Out There Draw (10 Gourmand Prizes). Retrieved from http://www.cafleurebon.com/vanilla-and-chocolate-notes-in-perfumery-baby-its-cold-out-there-10-draw-prizes/ 


Lynch (2008, March 24). Closet Cooking: Baklava. Retrieved from http://www.closetcooking.com/2008/03/baklava.html


Delp (n.d.a.). Love to Know Gourmet: History of Desserts. Retrieved from http://gourmet.lovetoknow.com/History_of_Desserts


Powers (2011, October 7). The history of dessert. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2011/10/08/the_history_of_dessert/


Lambert (n.d.a.). A Brief History of Chocolate. Retrieved from http://www.localhistories.org/chocolate.html