Devil’s FoodFoodlore & More is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A story appeared in in American newspapers in the 1820s entitled “Christmas Pies” about an Episcopal Family given to Christmas festivities and food in Puritan New England who lose their savor for these edible pleasures when they come to believe Christmas Pies, stolen by a thieving local deacon from a secure oven by the removal of some bricks, had been taken by the devil for food. So the idea of sumptuous dessert = devil’s food began to circulate in the United States. This is twenty years before French confectioners make chocolate cake the sensation in the shop windows of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Before the explicit connection of Devil’s Food with a kind of dark chocolate cake took place, other edibles were called “devil’s food”—Rev. Edward Bromley, Baptist minister at Norwood Massachusetts condemned baked beans as “Devil’s Food” in winter of 1876, inspiring nationwide derision in newspapers. Too humble a dish to steal someone’s soul.
ISSUE 68, CAKES, Part 5: Devil's Food
ISSUE 68, CAKES, Part 5: Devil's Food
ISSUE 68, CAKES, Part 5: Devil's Food
Devil’s FoodFoodlore & More is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A story appeared in in American newspapers in the 1820s entitled “Christmas Pies” about an Episcopal Family given to Christmas festivities and food in Puritan New England who lose their savor for these edible pleasures when they come to believe Christmas Pies, stolen by a thieving local deacon from a secure oven by the removal of some bricks, had been taken by the devil for food. So the idea of sumptuous dessert = devil’s food began to circulate in the United States. This is twenty years before French confectioners make chocolate cake the sensation in the shop windows of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Before the explicit connection of Devil’s Food with a kind of dark chocolate cake took place, other edibles were called “devil’s food”—Rev. Edward Bromley, Baptist minister at Norwood Massachusetts condemned baked beans as “Devil’s Food” in winter of 1876, inspiring nationwide derision in newspapers. Too humble a dish to steal someone’s soul.