Yummy: A History of Desserts - Victoria Grace Elliott - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Victoria Grace Elliott

GENRE: Graphic Nonfiction

PUBLICATION DATE: November 30, 2021

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A graphical non-fiction exploring the development of popular desserts. Contains a good mix of history, pseudo-interviews, stories, and recipes. Quite comprehensive and entertaining. A tempting [pun intended!] read for those with a sweet tooth. 😄

If you ask various people what they consider the yummiest dish, chances are that a majority of the responses you receive will mention some or the other dessert. Even those of us who don't have a sweet tooth enjoy at least some dessert once in a while. Cakes, ice-creams, donuts, pies,… (gulab jamun, kulfi, and kaju katli for my desi friends 🤤) – there is at least one dessert we like, if not love. But have you ever thought about how these desserts came into being? This graphical book aims to enlighten and entertain you at the same time on the scrumptious topic of desserts.

There are eight chapters in this book, covering one dessert per chapter. That might sound like too few, especially as the eight desserts include a few popular mainly in the USA (Ice-cream, cake, brownies, donuts, pies, gummies, cookies, and macarons). However, as they are presented through the lens of their historical evolution, the book includes all linked sweets and the global culinary developments that contributed to the modern-day version of the dessert, thereby spanning multiple regions of the world.

The content has a special presenter, a food-sprite named Peri, who doesn't just know her desserts but also gets emotional over desserts. Her passionate narration is enthusiastic as well as humorous, ensuring that the presentation never gets dry or boring.

Accompanying Peri are two more food-sprites: Fee - a bubbly character with a fondness for storytelling and role-playing, and Fada - a science enthusiast who likes facts but loves chocolate even more. The trio take us through the sweet culinary journey using a medley of content formats. We have Peri’s first-person narration guiding us through the key chronological timepoints in a dessert’s evolution. Fada offers the scientific basis for certain features of the dessert such as fluffiness or density. Fee participates in pseudo-interviews with Peri by role-playing as various historical personalities. There is also a special ‘Story Time’ session whereby Peri narrates the legend behind a particular dessert to her rapt audience, viz. Fada and Fee. And of course, there are the recipes, all tried and tested by the author and recreated on the page by the three sprites working in tandem.

Many of the chapters begin with a special 'Atlas of the World', showing the developmental route of that specific dessert over the ages. I wasn't surprised to see India (and by extension, the Indian subcontinent) being a contributor towards the present-day version of multiple desserts. With two key sweet ingredients - sugar and cinnamon - coming from this part of the world, we had a geographical advantage, for sure.

Just because the topic is sweet doesn't mean that it avoids all tricky history. Peri also touches upon hardhitting facts such as the impact of colonial rule and slavery on the global progression of desserts. Just one major geographical error I couldn’t ignore. There was no Pakistan in the 1500s. So any reference to that region in historical times should either have said India or “the Indian subcontinent” or “modern-day Pakistan”. (Of course, India and many other countries were known by other names all those centuries ago, but at least the concept of these nations existed. The ideation of ‘Pakistan’ didn’t even take place until a little before our country’s partition in 1947.)

The illustrations are digitally created and are as vibrant as a book about desserts should be. The colouring is done in bright pastel shades. The three sprites are sketched excellently. Thanks to their enthusiastic narration and their vivid expressions, even the pages appear lively. But what is most impressive is the effective use of the page space to convey so much information without letting the book appear cluttered.

Overall, anyone interested in food history and having a fondness for the sweeter edibles of life will enjoy this graphical book. Food history is rarely a boring topic, but with such a creative presentation, a wide variety of desserts, enthusiastic narrators, and colourful illustrations, this book stands out.

Of course, as even Peri acknowledges with great sadness, this book is not comprehensive enough. There are too many desserts around the world for a single book! But hopefully, this graphic novel will set the ball rolling for many readers to learn how their favourite sweet foods came into existence.

I think I would have enjoyed the book even more if I were a dessert aficionado. While I like a couple of sweets, I am more of a savoury-food person, so even Peri’s passion didn’t convert my heart. Moreover, no pie or gummy bear can be as satisfying as a motichur laddu or a rabri falooda to this desi tummy. This is more of a ME problem and not a BOOK problem.

Much recommended to dessert lovers and food history aficionados. The book is officially aimed at middle-graders, but the content is scrumptious enough to be appealing to anyone above the age of eight.