u/janettespeyer

I was digging into gelatin's history recently. Aspic and gelatin desserts were really a thing in the 1950s and 60s, but I missed that whole era, growing up a bit later with trifle and gelatina in South America.

Medieval Europe treated gelatin as a serious luxury. Cooks spent a whole day boiling bones and skins to get a clear jelly-like broth. Taillevent's 1395 Le Viandier claimed that if you're doing it right, you don't get to sleep. Aspic became a way to show off wealth, since only someone with servants to spare could pull it off.

Then powdered gelatin and refrigeration arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and it went from aristocratic to suburban almost overnight. Suddenly people were molding shrimp and cottage cheese into it.

I grew up with gelatina in Venezuela, where it was never fancy, just a kids' birthday party dessert. I've also tasted Japanese fruit jellies and British trifle. Savory aspic still shows up in parts of Europe.

Now apparently gelatin desserts are trending again. Curious if anyone here has a read on why something so unfashionable and almost forgotten in the US came back. Has this happened before with other "nostalgia food" categories?

I've been going down a rabbit hole researching desserts that existed before refined sugar became the norm. I found that foods like honey cake, rice pudding, and baklava have roots that go back thousands of years. They evolved over time.

Many of the earliest versions were sweetened with honey, dates, figs, grape syrup, or carob instead of sugar. I just made an ancient honey cake with no sugar, using honey and a combination of Sorghum and Einkorn flours. I modernized it with a dash of vanilla. It was actually delicious, sweet enough.

So now:

What's the oldest dessert you've ever eaten?
Do you think there are ancient desserts that deserve more recognition?
Do you have a traditional dessert that has old origins?

I put together some of the history I found if anyone's interested, but I'd love to hear about your dessert faves.

Images: 1. Is the honey cake I baked with all the nuts and dried fruit. 2. Is a sheet of baklava I photographed at a souk. 3. I have a chart with sweeteners they used to use before sugar.

How did Jell-O and gelatin desserts make a comeback from nowhere?

Which ancient desserts have actually survived to the present day?

It seems like NASA didn’t invent Tang. General Foods did years earlier, and NASA accidentally made it famous.

Most of us already have 3,000-year-old Traditional Chinese Medicine foods in our kitchens right now

When did fiber become a thing?

The Forgotten Chefs: How Enslaved People Built America’s Cuisine