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Home , Rice pudding, Sugar cream pie

Midwest (U.S.) • 449 names meaning “lady’s fingers,” such ass awābị ʿ al-sitt), like, thickened to one degree or another with starch, and luqam al-qāḍī. are still popular: mu- agar agar, or other products. In ascending order of hallabiyya (usually thickened with cornstarch), firmness, they aresakhana , khabīsạ , and halwạ̄ . Some rizz bi-ḥalīb ( , which has medieval an- have unusual flavorings, such as fava or even tecedents), and mughlī (a -enriched cross be- , and concentrated figures in manyh ̣alwās, tween a pudding and a ). See pudding. At possibly reflecting Indian influence. See halvah one point in the late Middle Ages, a crumbly and india. Oman is closer to Bombay than to Bagh- cookie evolved under the name ghurayba (literally, dad and has adopted at least one Indian , the “the little extraordinary thing”). Borrowed in Turk- Indian , siwāya, cooked with and nuts. ish, it was pronounced kurabiye, the name by which Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, it has become known in the West through its Greek is one of the world’s poorest countries. Its tradi- spelling, kourambies (pl. kourambiedes). tional sweets are usually flavored with , which If you look into a bakery in most of this area, is considered medicinal and also blessed, because you will be struck by the predominance of Turkish it is mentioned in the Qurʾān. Despite the country’s -type pastries. The Turkish influence is stron­ poverty, surprisingly expensive honey boutiques are gest in Damascus, which was a local center of admin- located in Sanaa. A typical sweet is fatūt, crumbled istration under the Ottoman government. Damascus bread that can actually be mixed with anything but still has a significant Turkish population and is very often is flavored with honey or bananas. The known for making the best baklava-type pastries in specialty of Sanaa is bint al-saḥ ṇ —layers of leavened the Arab world. Other widespread Turkish sweets dough, stacked up, baked, and served with butter are qamar al-din, the famous “apricot leather,” and and honey. In Sanaa, this dish is usually served at the sujuq, a confection made by dipping a string of beginning of the meal. meats into a boiling mixture of syrup See also honey and north africa. and cornstarch, as if dipping a candle. The name means “sausage” in Turkish, and the product does end Abdennour, Samia. Egyptian Cooking and Other Middle Eastern Recipes. Cairo: American University, 2011. up looking like a rather lumpy sausage. Hamad, Sarah al-. and Lime: Recipes from Particularly characteristic of northern Syria is the Arabian Gulf. Northampton, Mass.: Interlink, halāwaṭ jibn, a versatile sweet that is a little difficult to 2011. classify. It is made by toasting flour with butter and Helou, Anissa. . New York: St. Martin’s, stirring it with syrup—making a sweet roux, in effect. 1998. Ibn Sīda. Al-Mukhassas. Vol. 3, Book XI, pp. 57–64. When the mixture thickens, the cook kneads it with ̣ ̣ ̣ Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijārī lil-tibạ̄ ʿa wal-Tawzīʿ crumbled mild cheese to make something with a tex- wal-Nashr, 1965. ture oddly reminiscent of a washcloth. It can be eaten Nasrallah, Nawal. Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens: Ibn by itself or rolled around a stuffing such as nuts. Sayyār al-Warrāq’s Tenth-Century Baghdadi Cookbook, The most famous Egyptian sweet isom ʿAli pp. 374–432. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2005. (mother of Ali), a sort of made by Perry, Charles, trans. “Kitāb Wasf̣ al-Atʿ̣ ima al-Muʿtāda baking torn-up pieces of bread or filo dough with [The Description of Familiar ].” InMedieval milk and nuts. It is suspected that this dish is actually Arab Cookery, edited by Maxime Rodinson and A. J. adapted from the English bread pudding, which was Arberry, pp. 373–450. Totnes, U.K.: Prospect, introduced at a hospital in Upper Egypt during the 2000. Roden, Claudia. The New Book of Middle Eastern . early twentieth century by a nurse named O’Malley. New York: Knopf, 2000. Iraq shows recent Iranian influence, for instance, rangīna, a confection of dates and toasted flour, and Charles Perry nūni panjara, fritters cooked with a special iron like the Italian rosette. Iraq has indigenous specialties of its own, such as deep-fried cardamom-flavored The Midwest (U.S.) is the area of the United called salūq̣ . The Persian Gulf cooks much like States encompassing Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Iraq, except that there is far less Turkish influence. Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North The southern and eastern Arabian Peninsula cooks Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Long rather differently. Most sweets in Oman are pudding before this official definition, however, Midwesterners 450 • Midwest (U.S.) themselves were characterizing their region and its have constantly inherited, invented, and adapted food. In 1842, for example, Mrs. Philomelia Ann their food from the land around them; and the Maria Antoinette Hardin published the wonderfully people, sometimes very different from themselves, titled Every Body’s Cook and Receipt Book: But More who live alongside them. See maple sugaring; Particularly Designed for Buckeyes, Hoosiers, Wolver- ; and native american. ines, Corncrackers, Suckers, and All Epicures Who Wish The Great Plains states of Kansas, Iowa, the Dako- to Live with the Present Times, giving the Midwest its tas, and Nebraska have given Americans one vision first truly regional cookbook. Hardin’s book, pur- of the Midwest: a heartland of small towns and agrar- portedly the first printed west of the Alleghenies, ian values, where endless acres of cereal crops, such wasn’t a collection of recipes that she culled from as corn and wheat, unfurl among silos and farm- cooks in the East Coast or England. She speaks to the houses, as a classic dessert like sugar pie cools stomachs around her, with recipes for “Hoosier Pick- on the sill. Also known as Hoosier pie, farm pie, Indi- les” and “Buckeye Rusk.” Here is her recipe for “Wol- ana , and finger pie, because you stir it with verine Pudding”: your finger, this simple mix of flour, butter, salt,- va nilla, and cream originated with the Amish and per- A quarter of a pound of buiscets [sic] grated, a quar- haps Quaker communities who settled in Indiana in ter of a pound of currents cleanly washed and picked, the early nineteenth century. See pie. Over 600 miles a quarter of a pound of suet shred small, half a large away, in the Dakotas, recipes brought in the same spoonful of pounded sugar, and some grated ; mince it all well together, then take the yelks [sic] of period by Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian immi- three eggs, and make it all into balls as big as turkey’s grants give a sense of the communities who would eggs; fry them in fresh butter of a fine light brown. come to represent Middle America: the krumkake is a waffle cookie with Scandinavian origins that tradi- This was a dessert to get a Wolverine through a tionally shows up for celebrations, along- Michigan winter, and if readers lived in Ohio, Indi- side the sandbakelse, a sugar cookie baked in a fluted ana, Kentucky, or Illinois, they could find recipes to tin, and the rosette, an ornate, wafer-sized, deep-fried satisfy their sweet tooth, printed alongside “Valu- pastry. Powdered sugar might dust any of them. With able Rules” for making medicine, raising honey their ties to the old country and ongoing presence bees, or cultivating trees. Hardin’s book firmly at today’s tables, these testify to America’s roots its advice and recipes in the region now called belief in the Midwest as a place of family and tradi- the Midwest. See pudding. tion, where sweets offer one of life’s simple pleasures. The term itself, as it refers to the stretch of the This vision differs from the Midwest of the Great United States east of the Ohio River and west of the Lakes states, in which Rust Belt industrialization, Missouri, did not come into American usage until widespread immigration, and urban values, with the 1890s, and Hardin’s title hints at the difficulty of Chicago’s mighty skyline beckoning, define the describing this region’s character. Buckeyes, Hoo- region. Here, tradition and innovation work to- siers, and Wolverines still embrace those nicknames, gether. Immigrant sweets such as the Italian cassata but people from Kentucky or Illinois are not likely to found in Cleveland bakeries or the Polish see themselves as Corncrackers or Suckers. Mid- pączki in Detroit, filled with cream or jam and remi- western sweets are marked by this clash in the region niscent of a jelly doughnut, give the Midwest its sig- between continuity and change. From the Native nature character, but so do desserts like the brownie, Americans’ precolonial use of sinzibuckwud—the said to have been invented by a chef at the Palmer Algonquin word for “tree sap” that literally means House Hotel in 1893 during the Columbia Expo- “drawn from wood”—to the maple candy that Pa sition. See cassata and doughnuts. Apparently, gives his daughters in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s popular one Mrs. Bertha Palmer asked the chef to make a Little House on the Prairie series (“It was better even “ladies dessert”—not so messy as a piece of pie, not than their Christmas candy”), to the 568,000 gal- so big as a slice of cake—that she could include in lons of maple syrup produced by Ohio, Michigan, the boxes for women working at the fair. Voilà, and Wisconsin in 2013, Midwestern sweets have the brownie. See brownie. The Twinkie and the been created and consumed in response to the needs Cracker Jack also came from Chicago. See cracker and desires of the people who live there; people who jack and twinkie. In this vision, Midwestern military • 451 sweets are as diverse as its cities’ inhabitants and in- baking. See carême, marie-antoine. In his Physi- ventors, with Indian gulab jamun (fried balls soaked ologie du goût (1826), Jean Anthelme Brillat-­Savarin in sugar syrup) and brought north refers to the “multitude of delicate pastries which during the Great Migration as symbolic of Midwest- make up the fairly new art of baking little cakes.” ern sweets as the famed pies of Michigan’s M. LeBlanc, author of Roret’s Nouveau manuel com- Lower Peninsula or its Mackinac fudge. plet du pâtissier (1829), refers to the confection of These competing visions of the Midwest as city petits fours as a branch of patisserie in which par- and country fail to capture the rich complexity of ticular commercial bakers specialized. He advises the region, where small-town and big-city ideals professional bakers to have two ovens, including a constantly mix. A city such as St. Louis preserves its smaller oven devoted to baking petits fours and all German heritage with a fruitcake called stollen, and sorts of small cakes, to save on cooking fuel. By the a town of 27,000, as Mansfield, Ohio, was in the time LeBlanc was writing, there were already at least 1920s, can give birth to a mass-market product such 50 different types of ovens that the professional as the Klondike bar. See stollen. In fact, the Mid- baker could purchase. west is where the national food industry began and See small cakes. is currently housed. General Mills, Hostess Brands, the Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, Nabisco, Quaker Brillat-Savarin, J. A. The Physiology of Taste. Translated by Oats, and Sara Lee all started in the Midwest. See M. F. K. Fisher. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, hostess and sara lee. Wherever people are eating 1999. Originally published in 1826. Montagné, Prosper, ed. Larousse gastronomique. Paris: a mass-produced dessert, whether it is wrapped in Larousse, 1938. plastic or pulled from the freezer, they are eating Midwestern fare, a regional vision of food that has Kyri W. Claflin reached around the globe.

Fertig, Judith M. Prairie Home Cooking: 400 Recipes that military sweets are often overlooked, with studies Celebrate the Bountiful Harvests, Creative Cooks, and of food and the military generally focusing on the Comforting Foods of the American Heartland. Boston: nutritional content of rations. After all, as the pop- Harvard Common Press, 1999. Lewis, Jenny. Midwest Sweet Baking History: Delectable ular saying goes, “An army travels on its stomach.” Classics around Lake Michigan. Charleston, S.C.: However, since the creation of the U.S. Armed History Press, 2011. Forces, sweets have sustained our servicemen and Wolff, Peggy, ed.Fried Walleye and : Midwestern­ women emotionally and physically. Sweets have also Writers on Food. Lincoln: University of Nebraska served as a goodwill ambassador of sorts, distrib- Press, 2013. uted to foreign populations by American troops for Eric LeMay generations. The Revolutionary War–era Continental Congress first established an official field-feeding program mignardise, also called “friandise,” is a general for the military in 1775, attempting to standardize category that includes many kinds of little sweets— rations and their preparation. The basic “garrison small cakes, cookies, macarons, , can- ration” allocated per soldier per week typically in- died , and pralines—served most often at the cluded beef, pork, or salt fish; bread or flour; milk end of a meal with and liqueur. The word or either cider or spruce beer plus a small stipend; comes from the French mignard, meaning “delicate” and peas or beans. Slight variations on this garrison or “pretty,” which in turn derives from the medieval ration remained the standard for servicemen under word mignon, meaning “small.” Mignardise can be all conditions, whether they were in camp, in the synonymous with the petit four (literally, “small field, or in combat, from the Revolution through oven”), which appears to be a creation of the nine- World War I. teenth century. The famous French chef Marie-­ By World War I, the military had created a Antonin Carême claimed that the name referred to slightly broader range of rations, designed for use the baking of these small cakes in a slow oven whose under varying conditions of warfare. There existed, heat dissipated after the large desserts had finished for example, reserve rations, trench rations, and