5 popular sweets that were not invented where many think

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some sweets seem to have existed for centuries, while others are sure that they are purely Soviet cuisine. So their real story may surprise. In any case, no matter who and when invented the favorite dessert of millions, the main thing is that it makes people happy.

Potato cake

There is a legend that it was invented by Leningrad confectioners. In fact, Soviet sweets masters only adapted a recipe invented in Finland. Finn Lars Asthenius, in his cookbook published in the mid-nineteenth century, described a way to bake a cake from pastry scraps from biscuits and cakes. His cake also included jam. The recipe he proposed made it possible not to waste the remnants of the confectionery production - in general, it was economical in Finnish.

There are many different versions of how the Finnish cake turned into the "potato" we know. One of them says that in the twenties in the USSR, firewood and coal had to be desperately economized, so that the cakes, so that there was something to put on the table for guests, were molded so that they did not have to bake. From crumbs or hastily fried flour, sweetener (sugar, honey or sweeteners), butter or margarine, often impregnated with alcohol residues and glaze from melted chocolate bar residues. In general, from what you could scrape together on kitchen cabinets.

Later, the popular dish was ennobled by professional chefs, and the classic potato became light on the inside and chocolate on the outside - to resemble a real potato. She also had several official recipes, usually involving butter, cocoa, and milk powder. But in the nineties, the housewives again returned to the tricks of the twenties: crumbs and remnants of what was found in cabinets and refrigerators.

Cheesecake

The name of this dessert literally translates as cheese or curd pie. Many people confidently associate it with purely American cuisine. In fact, cheese pies - with a little dough, a lot of cottage cheese or soft cheese and a sweetener to make it easier to eat that much curd - were invented in ancient Greece as a special protein diet for athletes.

The Romans borrowed cheese pie from the Greeks - in particular, Julius Caesar, a great admirer of everything Greek, loved him, and with the Romans, the pie was sold to all the places he conquered, that is, most of Europe. And in the United States, it was made incredibly popular by pizzerias that offered cheesecake with berries or jam as a dessert.

Boiled condensed milk

Another dish that Russians consider to be purely Soviet. In fact, it is the ancient dulce de leche dessert popular in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American cuisine. Only instead of canned food - already condensed milk with sugar - the cooks and housewives condensed ordinary sweet milk, simultaneously caramelizing it. That is, they took fresh milk, added sugar and slowly boiled it down, evaporating the liquid. In the process, the melted sugar made the milk pale brown and slightly stringy.

Of course, dulce de leche may not all coincide with boiled condensed milk. Housewives can add vanilla or cinnamon to it for a scent. In Mexico, it is brewed from goat's milk, in Puerto Rico - from coconut. Still dulce de leche, it seems, no one except children eats with just a spoon. It is usually added as a filling in other desserts like pancakes, waffles, ice cream and the like.

Chocolate sausage

Another sweetness that seemed purely Soviet before international tourism became more or less accessible to Russians. And here a Russian (and not only Russian) person discovered that the Portuguese love "chocolate salami" with wine impregnation, the Greeks and Turks - something that they themselves call "mosaics", Romanians - "salami from cookies", and so on, etc. All in all, this is just a popular way to turn a broken cookie into a dessert on its own.

It is believed that the Germans were the first to do this, back in the eighteenth century. They called it "cold dog". Why a dog? Well, it is worth remembering that the sausage in a bun called "hot dog", that is, "hot dog", was spread in the United States at one time by the Germans. That is, this is just a playful name for a sausage, which means that the dessert itself was called, in fact, "cold sausage".

German confectioners and bakers at the time contributed to the spread of so many different desserts, so you shouldn't be surprised to find German recipes all over the world. Only Austrians and Italians can argue with them. So, for example, it was the Austrians, not the French, who invented the croissants, and the Italians, not the French, created the macaroni cookies.

bird's milk

In 2020, Russia said goodbye to confectioner Anna Chulkova, the developer of the classic Soviet recipe for "Bird's Milk" sweets. But in fact, sweets with the same name and similar qualities were produced before Chulkova, in Warsaw, by the popular Wedel confectionery. This factory has existed since the middle of the nineteenth century and has developed many recipes for sweets during its operation. "Bird's milk" "Wedel" presented to customers in 1936.

In 1967, the candy was tasted by the Soviet Minister of the Food Industry Zotov. He brought with him a sample of sweets and set the task for the technologists of the USSR to produce sweets no worse. As a result, Anna Chulkova created her own recipe, which differed from the Polish one, first of all, in the plant basis of the filling - agar-agar, an alga with gelling properties, which is now popular among lovers of healthy lifestyle and vegetarianism, was used for soufflé. It was very unusual at the time.

The history of other desserts, which we often see on the shelves or in glossy magazines, is also interesting. Italians with a sweet tooth and practical Americans: How popular desserts were born.