Your Just Deserts

A desert is an arid region often associated with sand dunes and hot weather, although several deserts are in fact void of sand and are very cold.

A dessert is a tasty after-dinner treat consisting most often of something sweet.

People often mistake the two because they sound alike but are spelled differently.

To get your “just deserts” is a phrase that doesn’t help matters. It means to get one’s apt reward or punishment — as one deserves. It means neither you’ll just get an arid landscape or an apple pie. Often, restaurants will “cleverly” name their business “Just Desserts” as a pun to draw a clientele who find this sort of thing witty. In fact, the word comes from “deserve.”

Who, I wonder, deserves this Baked Prune Whip?

The Miracle Blender Cookbook: The Fine Art of Modern Blending, Tested Recipe Publishers, 1967

Also from this book: The Miracle of Blending! 

Insouciance

Got company coming over? A ladies luncheon or coffee morning? Or a date with your mother-in-law? Perhaps you’ve invited the new neighbors over to introduce yourself.

Should you be compelled to entertain, but find that for whatever reason, you just don’t give a f*ck, then this is the perfect thing to serve. It says “I went to the trouble, but didn’t trouble myself too much.” It’s semi-homemade in a way that signals you’re a busy woman who wants to keep up appearances, but hasn’t got time to appear to keep them up. A dessert such as this acknowledges that you like tradition in the kitchen and fashion in the dining room. It says “I understand the fundamentals but like to throw them together according to my mood.”

Whatever message it sends, it’s sure to please the unfortunates among your crowd who will feel encouraged to gorge now and purge later, or perhaps to decline to indulge themselves at all in order to maintain their figures. You can go ahead and give it a fancy French name. No-one will know what it means. 

Dessert Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1960

One Page Fits All

Reading materials have always come with illustrations. At first, the pictures were made with woodblock prints inserted into black spaces left by the printer. When books were assembled, whole pages were devoted to carefully painted illustrations, and oversize letters within the text were extravagantly decorated. Once the Victorians invented leisure time, childhood, compulsory education, and spending money, young people enjoyed books made especially for them which included beautiful color illustrations interspersed throughout the story, as well as lively pen and ink prints that often showed a dramatic scene which was then happening in the text.

Cookery and household management books lagged far behind, only getting small, poor-quality black and white photographs of dishes every now and then. The purpose of such images seems not to be for instruction but to break up the acres of densely-packed print.

The idea that you could separate out the pictures from the text, or that you could or should use pictures to demonstrate technique or showcase a dish has been late in coming to fruition. Back in 1979, for example, book designers still used photographs sparingly, without much thought to the composition of the image.

Here, three non-complementary desserts are grouped together in matching glass serving bowls simply because all three recipes appear on the opposite page. They would never be served together in real life, and none makes any of the others look as appetizing as they would be if shot alone. One cannot, for example, imagine the apricot-based dish’s flavor when faced with the strident green of the Grasshopper parfaits which loom above. The small dish to the side is made from cheese and nuts.

The idea that you should aim to push as many dishes onto the table so they can appear in one shot dates a cookbook as much as any other element. Today’s food stylists and photographers would cringe at the thought of assembling and lighting such a mis-matched ensemble of colors and textures. Here, the photographer has opted for a one-size-fits-all approach with a warm filter and overhead lamp that does none of these dishes justice.

Fix It Fast Cookbook, Better Homes and Gardens, 1979