Looney Labs Something Mailing list Archive

[Something] A Sketch Towards a Taxonomy of Meta-Desserts

  • FromDoug Orleans <dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx>
  • DateSun, 8 Jul 2007 15:10:15 -0400
This might be of interest to dessert fans:

A Sketch Towards a Taxonomy of Meta-Desserts
by Holly Gramazio of raspberrydebacle.com

http://tinyurl.com/yumzqh

Excerpt:

  What are the fundamental dessert types, the metaphorical atoms of
  dessert, or "dessertoms"? A brownie is very "stable", which is to say
  it can be combined with many different desserts while still remaining
  delicious -- but surely it isn't a fundamental dessert type: a brownie
  is basically just a sulky teenage cake. A crepe, on the other hand,
  probably is a fundamental dessert type, but it's a relatively unstable
  one -- it won't taste good if you put it on a cookie.

  Furthermore, desserts can be transformed not just through the
  application of another sort of dessert, adding dessert type A to
  dessert type B, but also by the application of a Dessert
  Function. Dessert Functions are things like "freeze it", "put nuts on
  it", "take out all the flour", "cover it in alcohol and set it on
  fire" -- stuff you can do to any dessert that has a good chance of
  leaving it edible, or better still transforming it into an exciting
  new dessert.

  Clearly this is a topic that requires for further discussion:

     1. a rigorously defined vocabulary;
     2. extensive research to discover the fundamental dessert types;
     3. some sort of consistency in what "applying dessert type A to
	dessert type B" actually entails; and
     4. Lots of little pictures on graph paper.


--dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx