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All American Desserts: 400 Star-Spangled, Razzle-Dazzle Recipes for America's Best Loved Desserts ReviewIn the last few years, we have been treated to a sweet explosion of books on `American' desserts from special subject books on chocolate and cookies to general books like the present volume covering the entire dessert table. In fact, 2003 has brought us two such volumes, this title by Judith M. Fertig and a very similar title by TV Network pastry personality Wayne Harley Brachman. I will conclude with a comparison of these two books.
Ms. Fertig takes her queue on the meaning of `American food' from Julia Child, who said anything cooked in America by Americans with American ingredients is `American'. With all respect to Ms. Julia, this definition is great to roll off the tongue to dismiss a query, but it excludes practically nothing. The title of the book `All American Desserts' suggests a more highly selective criteria for including recipes, but I suspect the title is simply a means to do some flag waving over our apple pies. The book is loaded with classic European dishes such as crème broulee, tiramisu, agua fresca, Swedish Torte, and Biscotti. The simple truth is that the book covers anything that is made and enjoyed in America, and this is a good thing.
It is probably also fair to say the book does not cover everything made and enjoyed in America, as that would require a book at least three times the 504 pages devoted to recipes. There is no rhubarb pie for example, but for that we have Brachman's book.
Unlike every other `American' baking book I have seen, Ms. Fertig actually tells us how many of the desserts in the book became American, based either on an ingredient native to North America such as cranberries or by an historical connection to a European tradition, as when she traces the effect on desserts of four different migrations from four different parts of the British Isles to the colonies, based on `David Fischer's historical work, `Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America'. For this extra effort to make the book's premise worthwhile, I send Ms. Fertig a great big virtual smooch. The book goes a lot further than this in dealing with the American roots of its recipes. There are sidebars on virtually all the classic American ingredients such as sorghum, Concord grapes, pumpkins, molasses, and rosewater. Also, `America' is broadly interpreted to mean `the New World' when it's convenient, as when Mexican vanilla is presented as an American ingredient.
The `Desserts' title is especially appropriate for this book, as both `baking' and `pastry' would not convey the full range of recipes covered in the book. The recipe chapters cover:
Fruit Preserves and Desserts, with a glossary explaining the perpetually confusing and overlapping terms such as `crisp', `crumble', `cobbler', `pandowdy' and many others. Classics such as Bananas Foster and Southern Ambrosia are well represented.
Cookies, with brownies, chess squares, pecan balls, chocolate chip cookies, whoopie pies, and Germantown lebkuchen, but no snickerdoodles!
Cakes, with classic yellow cake, baked Alaska, Stars and Stripes blueberry sponge cake, blueberry buckle with pecan streusel, Moravian sugar cake, and cheesecake, cheesecakes, cheesecake.
Pies, with Apple pie, Shaker lemon pie, key lime pie, Shoofly pie, crab apple Tarte Tatins, and funnel cake.
Puddings, Custards, Mousses, Flans, and Souffles, with New Jersey Applejack Mousse, Jacqueline Kennedy's Cold Chocolate Souffle, blueberry batter pudding, iron skillet butterscotch pudding, Bess Truman's Ozark Pudding, and New Orleans bread pudding.
Ice Creams, with Monticello vanilla flecked ice cream, Chicago Fire Ice Cream, Shaker coffee ice, spiced persimmon ice cream, and peaches with ice cream.
Candy and Flavored syrups, with cherry-almond divinity, New Orleans style pecan pralines, Mamie Eisenhower's Million Dollar Fudge, microwave peanut brittle, caramel popcorn, bourbon balls, cajeta, almond syrup, and rosy rhubarb syrup.
While I still miss my snickerdoodles and my rhubarb pie, it should be clear that Ms. Fertig has included virtually every region in the country. From the Pennsylvania Dutch country I know best, the book includes apple dumplings, Moravian sugar cookies, and shoofly pie, although I regret her understandable effort to make this more appealing to modern tastes. I still prefer the black strap molasses.
Every recipe includes a headnote explaining the origin of the recipe or a bit of how the author acquired it and, as with shoofly pie, what variation of the dozens available, did she pick. There are several sidebars on the best techniques for doing things such as making piecrusts, drying apples, and creaming butter and sugar.
Amazingly, this book does not cover fried doughs and its most common examples, doughnuts and bignets. For that, and for your rhubarb pie, you have Wayne Harley Brachman's book. For snickerdoodles, you will have to go to Nancy Baggett's `All American Cookie Book'. Brachman's book is less than half the size of Ms. Fertig's encyclopedia, yet there are people for which it may be the better first choice. While Fertig has many asides on baking technique, Brachman's instruction on piecrust making, for example, is much more detailed and enhanced with excellent photographs of the steps. Brachman's book will not replace pastry texts by Flo Braker or Nick Malgieri, but it does give better instruction from the point of view of a professional baker, of which Brachman is one of the best. The two books also complement one another with their headnotes and asides. Fertig gives lots of information you simply do not find elsewhere in culinary books. Brachman gives us lots of laughs. He is definitely the most amusing culinary writer this side of Alton Brown.
Highly recommended for bakers of all skills, especially as a great source for many regional specialities.
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