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SWEET INVENTION

Chicago Review Press

Contents

Introduction..........................................................11 * Sacred Fudge * India..............................................152 * A Thousand and One Sweet Layers * Middle East.....................753 * Sugar and Spice * Italy...........................................1194 * Let Them Eat Cake * France........................................1695 * Schlag and Strauss * Vienna.......................................2456 * A Democracy of Sweetness * United States..........................305Finale * Cupcakes and Macarons........................................363Acknowledgments.......................................................373Selected Bibliography.................................................375Notes.................................................................391Index.................................................................431

Chapter One

India

Kali Puja

In Kolkata, the air is always thick with poison and perfume but never more so than on the eve of Kali Puja, the holiday dedicated to Kali, the goddess of destruction and rebirth. That night, the atmosphere fills with the sulfurous plumes of rockets and exploding fireworks. The traffic that gives the city its insistent backbeat of honks and beeps crawls even more slowly than usual so that the noxious exhaust pools at the intersections instead of dissolving into the yellow air. Yet in the narrow alleys, the diesel fumes periodically give way to an altogether different smell, a sweet and sweaty scent that brings to mind breasts and mother's milk. But it is a very Indian mother's milk: musky, and perfumed with cardamom and rosewater. The odor oozes from thousands of sweetshops across the metropolis, where cauldrons of sweet cow's milk and fat buffalo milk are boiled, simmered, curdled, and formed into sweetmeats for this holiday—and for the next.

For Kali Puja, block associations, sports clubs, and everyone else with the time and money put up pandals (temporary shrines). There are perhaps two thousand of these miniature temples set up around the city's neighborhoods. Kali is everywhere. In a working-class enclave, where every street is bedecked with streamers of colored lights, the warrior mother towers above her temporary shrine, her blue, four-armed body surrounded by an electric violet halo of flowers and mandalas. A collection of fruit and sweetmeat offerings is arranged at her feet. Across town, on a busy commercial strip, the pandal almost blocks the sidewalk, while the black-skinned, naked goddess peruses the passersby, her blood-red tongue protruding as if in surprise. Next to a ferry pontoon dock tugged at by the mud-brown Hooghly River, the shrine is no bigger than a broom closet, yet this diminutive Kali looks pleased, perhaps because one of her acolytes has smeared her mouth with milky sweets.

At the Kalighat temple in south Kolkata, her devotees wait for hours to see her awesome countenance on her holiday. Kali's most revered shrine is a relatively modest affair, a two-story-high ziggurat that sits at the end of a broad pedestrian street lined with stands selling devotional postcards and tourist gimcracks. As you get closer to the holy structure, there is that sweet, milky smell again, emanating from the shops that crowd around the temple's two entrances. Here the stands sell just two things, garlands of Kali's favorite flower, the blood-red hibiscus, and her beloved sweet, a concentrate of milk and sugar called pedha. The shopkeepers spend their day unhurriedly forming great mounds of sweet paste into disks about the size of a silver dollar, pressing a few grains of cardamom into each. The pilgrims, in their festive best, buy these by twos and threes to present to the deity. The vendors wrap each in a cone of leaves and garnish it with a hibiscus blossom. There is something primeval, even elemental, about the sweets—the dense, fudgy concentrate of almost pure fat, protein, and carbohydrate, almost like an emergency military ration or space food more than a sweetmeat. Ancient Hindu texts over two thousand years ago mention much the same sweet offering. The Indian gods are renowned for their sweet tooth. So are their people.

In West Bengal, Kali Puja comes fast on the heels of Durga Puja, a ten-day celebration held in honor of Durga, a sunnier mother goddess. Here too, the deity is regaled with sweetmeats. Her worshippers follow suit, sending boxes of sugary snacks to everyone on their list. Immediately after Kali's festival comes Bhai Phota, or brother's day. This, several confectioners tell me, is their busiest day of the year, for it isn't merely brothers who are blessed with a present of sweets but any male in the vicinity.

Kali Puja also happens to coincide with Diwali, a five-day holiday celebrated throughout India. Diwali has many of the elements of Christmas. Presents are exchanged, and oil lamps (or more commonly these days streamers of electric "Christmas" lights) illuminate homes, businesses, and streets. But mostly people gorge on sweets. According to one study, Indians gain two to three kilograms around the time of Diwali. Children get little toys molded out of pure sugar while the adults go in for more elaborate preparations. These vary somewhat according to the region. There are puddings of various kinds. In north India, favorite items include kheer (elsewhere called payesh or payasam), a thick rice pudding with raisins and nuts, as well as other custardlike desserts thickened with wheat germ or almonds. Fritters are popular too. The most widely dispersed are jalebis, those violent yellow strands of tangled dough soaked in syrup. And everywhere there are laddus. To make this ubiquitous dessert, confectioners begin with a thinnish batter (typically based on chickpea flour, though there are variations that use sesame or semolina), which they dribble into hot butter to form little drops. These deep-fried drops, now looking a little like corn kernels, are then soaked in saffron-tinted sugar syrup. This is referred to as bonde. When formed into two-bite-sized balls it is called a laddu.

Even cattle aren't left out of Diwali. In rural areas, farmers will feed their cows sweetmeats to mark the holiday. Needless to say, cows are holy to Hindus and so by extension are butter and milk. The holy texts of India's most ancient religion are full of references to these sacred fluids. Ghee, or clarified butter, is considered especially precious.

Dining with Gods

Ghee is mentioned over and over in the sacred Hindu texts. In the Mahabharata you read how the gods extracted the nectar of immortality from the deep ocean. This divine greasy fluid, called amrita, takes the form of ghee. The gods, led by Narayana (an avatar of the great god Vishnu), devise a way to get their hands on this ambrosia. They grab hold of a towering mountain, uproot it, and set it down on the immense shell of the tortoise king. Holding this mammoth contraption, they whirl it round and round, a little like a fantastical immersion blender that liquefies everything in its path: the beasts and fishes of the sea as well as the lions, elephants, and other unfortunate creatures are flung off the whirling mountain. Along the way, the trees and herbs...