A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat is a delightful—and delicious!—book for young children. Written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by Sophie Blackall, the book imaginatively depicts four children making blackberry fool with their mother or father.
The families are imagined to live in Lyme, England, in 1710; Charleston, South Carolina, in 1810; Boston, Massachusetts, in 1910; and San Diego, California, in 2010. In each snapshot, the child and parent procure the ingredients for the whimsical dessert blackberry fool and whip it up and chill it with varying degrees of difficulty based on available technology.
Children in the preschool set will likely find the repetition irresistible, one of those books that as soon as you reach the final page calls for, “Again! Read it again!” go up. The progression from the bundle of twigs to the electric mixer, the ice filled hole in a hill to modern refrigeration is a thought-provoking exercise for adults reading the book.
As with many good books, such as My Grandfather’s Coat, the book includes a recipe at the end. Given that so many people have likely never heard of blackberry fool, it’s a helpful addition. As is the author’s note at the end of the book explaining that the “fool” in blackberry fool does not imply silly fool but rather is thought to come from the French fouler, meaning “to tread” or “to crush.” Because the blackberries are crushed, the thinking goes, this came into the English as fool. Whatever the thinking (read to the end for more on that), the result is a big bowl of full-bodied, old-fashioned whipped cream with purple stripes of tangy blackberry juice mingling delicately with the cream.
For those uninitiated in the crushing process, this is a magnificent improvement on the blackberry. Of course, as the author notes, you can make fool with any kind of fruit, but the rich purple and tart taste of the blackberry make it an especially good candidate. De-seeding the blackberry, as one does by crushing the blackberries through a sieve, is a great improvement on the flavor profile of the blackberry. Unlike many other children’s books that include a recipe that few people ever end up using, A Fine Dessert is so insistent in its praise for the likely untasted dainty that the recipe calls out to be made. An added benefit of the fool as a dessert specimen is not having to heat anything. In the dog days of summer, this dessert is a surefire hit requiring no added perspiration.
Blackall’s detailed illustrations provide a thorough visual portrayal of Jenkins’ straightforward narration. The story is simple, as a mother and daughter make a dessert and eat it. Since the book was published in 2015, the creative team seems incapable of resisting some social justice flourish. In the 2010 version of the family making blackberry fool the child is a boy and he does the dessert preparation with his dad. Thrilling.
More controversially, in 1810 South Carolina, the girl and her mother making the dessert are enslaved. The depiction seems out of place in the light-hearted children’s book. It provides a starting place for conversation with older children (perhaps not the three-year-old), but is a bit forced.
The pages with the slave girl and her mother show the characters preparing the dessert as the other families did, waiting at table to serve the dessert, and hiding in the closet to lick the bowl. In some of the illustrations, the girl has a wan smile. Taken out of context and unfairly lampooned as “smiling slaves,” the book produced the familiar calls for burning and obliteration. Jenkins issued a groveling apology writing, “Even though there is by no means space to explore the topic of slavery fully, I wanted to represent American life in 1810 without ignoring that part of our history,” which is what she wrote in the author’s note to the book. She continued, “I have come to understand that my book, while intended to be inclusive and truthful and hopeful, is racially insensitive,”
Not good enough! There was outrage that a short children’s book dared to include “the words ‘master’ and ‘plantation’ but no overt reference to, or explanation of, slavery itself.” Was it misplaced? Perhaps. Was it evil whitewashing? Resoundingly no.
To her credit, the illustrator Sophie Blackall defended the work explaining (sanely), “It is not intended to be the only story children will read. It does not fully depict the horrors of slavery, but I don’t think such a depiction would be appropriate for this particular age group.” On the subject of the notorious smiling Blackall made another sane point, writing, “I believe oppressed people throughout history have found solace and even joy in small moments.”
It is odd to see the debate raging about precisely the percentage of slave mothers separated from slave daughters and how that should have been depicted in a brief book for young children about making dessert. So fixated on the identity of a group, readers (or people who stumbled across a few pages of the book without context) seem incapable of viewing the fictional characters as specific. Their particular experience may have involved living and working together, sharing human moments of joy.
The inclusion of slavery overcomplicates the text as it comes across so obviously as a self-conscious attempt to enforce diversity quotas. If there were some meaningful connection between this somewhat obscure dessert and the characters portrayed it would seem less contrived, but, like the decision to show men working in the enlightened 21st century kitchen, it all just seems a bit contrived. None of this will bother young readers, and the book still has much to recommend it.
Now, for a more complete look at the blackberry fool itself. It seems attempts to link the dessert “fool” to the French fouler have not been a success. A piece in the Washington Post suggests that the term “fool” could well correspond with the regular use of the English word, observing, “The closest we come to tracing the fool’s original identity is to link it with its culinary cousin, the trifle. Next to a proper Anglo-Saxon suet pudding, which is a sort of edible Victoria and Albert Museum, the fool and the trifle are little nothings, mere frivolities.” Indeed, the article continues, “After all, what is either of them but mashed or pure’ed fruit combined with whipped cream or boiled custard?”
On the subject of this frivolous dessert, the Washington Post provides further insight on the consistency one is aiming for with the fool. Anne Crutcher writes, “Folding anything into whipped cream or egg whites is often a matter of uncertainty for the cook. How much homogenizing is enough? It’s always a tricky question. In making a fool, however, the best policy is to err on the side of under-folding. The dish is most appealing with strands of pure’ed fruit appearing in marbleized patterns rather than being completely assimilated into the cream.”
On a final note of whismy, Crutcher suggests using small pastries shells filled with fool to make “ships of fools.” As she says, “It’s just the sort of opportunity that invites fools to rush in.”
