Yet it is not the sugar that's thrown in between,
Nor the peel of the lemon so candied and green,
'T is not the rich cream that's whipped up by a mill,
Oh, no; it is something more exquisite still!
The great meaning of dessert is to offer "something more exquisite still." And it is the province of the housekeeper, be she young or old, to study how this can be done.
Nothing in European dinners can compare with the American custards, puddings, and pies. We are accused as a nation of having eaten too many sweets, and of having ruined our teeth thereby; but who that has languished in England over the insipid desserts at hotels, and the tooth-sharpeners called "sweets," meaning tarts as sour as an east wind, has not sighed for an American pie? In Paris the cakes are pretty to look at, but oh, how they break their promise when you eat them! Nothing but sweetened white of egg. One thing they surpass us in,—omelette soufflé; and a gâteau St. Honoré is good, but with that word of praise we dismiss the great French nation.
Just look at our grand list of fruit desserts: apple charlotte, apricots with rice, banana charlotte, banana fritters, blackberry short-cake, strawberry short-cake, velvet cream with strawberries, fresh pine-apples in jelly, frozen bananas, frozen peaches in cream, orange cocoanut salad, orange salad, peach fritters, peach meringue, peach short-cake, plum salad, salad of mixed fruits, sliced pears with whipped cream, stewed pears, plain, and pumpkin pie! But oh! there is "something more exquisite still," and that is an apple pie.
"All new dishes fade, the newest oft the fleetest;
Of all the pies ever made, the apple's still the sweetest.
Cut and come again, the syrup upward springing,