Stars and Sweets, Forever

Cookbook author says pudding, not pumpkin pie, was first dessert

You could make the argument that the first truly American dessert was pumpkin pie, served up at the original Thanksgiving dinner and enjoyed by Native Americans and English pilgrims.

It would seem to make sense — but you’d be wrong.

For the real story, just ask Judith Fertig, who spent the past couple of years researching and writing a new cookbook, “All-American Desserts: 400 Star-Spangled, Razzle-Dazzle Recipes for America’s Best Loved Desserts” (The Harvard Common Press, 2003).

“Our ideas are a little misguided. One of these ideas is that at the first pilgrim Thanksgiving, the Indians and the pilgrims sat down to pumpkin pie. That came later,” Fertig said in a telephone interview from her Overland Park home.

“They would have had to use things that kept a long time — like spices or wild currants and berries — and dried them. The dessert was probably some kind of boiled English pudding. Suet mixed with a little bit of flour, probably some dried fruit and spices, especially nutmeg and rosewater.”

It was an inauspicious beginning for the uniquely American dessert, and an unlikely ancestor of today’s perennial favorites such as the classic brownie, chocolate chip cookies, cake and ice cream.

In preparing to write her latest cookbook — she has written eight — Fertig had to become an expert in the historic roots of American desserts. To do that, she became a regular visitor to the stacks of the culinary collection at Kansas State University’s library. She paged through some actual, historic cookbooks, as well as facsimile editions of early works. That included taking a gander at recipes from Martha Washington’s family cookbook.

She learned some interesting things.

“It wasn’t until 1796 that we actually had the first American cookbook (“American Cookery”). I got to look at the facsimile of that, a photocopied edition of the very, very old text. Amelia Simmons was the author, and she was from New York. In her cookbook, we get the first mentions of the word ‘cookie,’ and she has three recipes for Indian pudding,” Fertig said.

Too bad the cooks at that first Thanksgiving didn’t have a copy of Simmons’ book.

Cool Whip and cake mix

In the course of her research, Fertig — who writes a weekly feature called “Come Into My Kitchen” for The Kansas City Star — learned the factors that have come to typify the American dessert.

“American ingredients — that would be the main thing. We (as a country) were left alone for a lot of years so we could develop our culinary repertoire without undue influence from Europe. It did give us some time to kind of do our own thing, and we came up with things like brownie — a truly American recipe that everyone loves — and angel food cake,” Fertig said.

“American ingredients like cornmeal, maple syrup, some apple varieties … American desserts are going to taste a little different. The ingredients are the main thing.”

Classic Hot Fudge Sauce—-2/3 cup sugar1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder3/4 cup heavy cream1/2 cup corn syrup2 tablespoons instant espresso coffee powder2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened1 teaspoon vanilla extractCombine the sugar, cocoa, cream, corn syrup and espresso powder in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stir for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla. Whisk until smooth. Serve warm over ice cream, pound cake, or other desserts. Or transfer to a jar, cool, then cover and refrigerate. Keeps indefinitely. Makes about 2 cups.Rum and Banana Cream—-1 cup heavy cream2 tablespoons rum (white, dark, or spiced)2 tablespoons light brown sugar, packed2 very ripe bananas, mashedfreshly grated nutmeggrated chocolateWhip the cream with the rum and brown sugar. Fold in the mashed bananas.Spoon into 6 chilled martini glasses or ice cream bowls. Dust each with grated nutmeg and grated chocolate and serve. Makes 6 servings.

In “All-American Desserts,” Fertig remained faithful to the ingredients called for in some of the family-favorite recipes, even when it went against her better judgment.

“We had to put Cool Whip in the book because it’s an American ingredient. I would rather use real cream and unsalted butter, really good vanilla and really good almond flavoring. I can taste the difference,” she said.

“I’m not a cake mix person. Some are actually pretty good if you doctor them up, but as a general rule, I don’t buy cake mix and I don’t buy Cool Whip. I buy really good honey — you know, things that taste like something.”

Fertig brought years of experience as a culinary journalist, a professionally trained expert in the kitchen and a cookbook author to the task of writing her latest effort.

She studied at La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine when it was in Paris (it’s now located in France’s Burgundy region) and at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in London while she was living in that city from 1984-87.

Fertig’s “Prairie Home Breads: 150 Splendid Recipes from America’s Breadbasket” (Harvard Common Press, 2001) was chosen as one of the 10 best cookbooks of the year by the Chicago Tribune.

Her book “Prairie Home Cooking: 400 Recipes that Celebrate the Bountiful Harvests, Creative Cooks, and Comforting Foods of the American Heartland” (Harvard Common Press, 1999) was nominated for both the International Association of Culinary Professionals and James Beard awards.

Homemade looks OK

So what are the quintessential American desserts?

Fertig pointed to brownies, classic birthday cake, sheet and layer cakes, chocolate chip cookies, the hot fudge sundae and — of course — apple pie.

“And we are nutso about ice cream in this country. We eat more ice cream per capita than any place in the world. Another one would be cheesecake. Americans are nutso about cheesecake, too,” she said.

Homespun American desserts tend to emphasize taste above fancy appearance, and that’s fine.

“One example of that is if you go to Paris to a French patisserie, you’ll see these fabulous looking tarts, but if you order one and you start to eat it, it just doesn’t taste like anything,” Fertig said.

“Especially for homemade desserts, we’ve sort of given ourselves some leeway. We don’t need to be Martha Stewart perfect. If you bring a homemade dessert (to a gathering), you don’t want it to look dowdy, but you do want it to look homemade — kind of friendly. I think dessert should be friendly, just like Americans are.”