A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat

A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat
by Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall
Random House, 2015. Unpaged. Picture Book.

Three centuries ago, a mother and daughter in the English village of Lyme gathered blackberries, milked the cow and skimmed the cream, and whipped it with "a bundle of clean, soft twigs. Then they put it all together for "a fine dessert": blackberry fool. A hundred years later in America, a black woman and her daughter gathered blackberries from the plantation garden where they were slaves. Cream arrived in a horse-drawn cart and was whipped with a metal whisk. This fine dessert was served to the master and his family. The mother and her daughter licked the bowl. In 1910 a Boston family bought blackberries at a market, and in 2010, a father and son bought pasteurized organic cream and two boxes of blackberries at the supermarket. The history of "a fine dessert" is a history of more things than one, and a beautifully well illustrated look at our history, and beyond.

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