Every month, the baking club at my office elects two members to prepare baked goods to commemorate the birthdays of all of their co-workers for that month. As the only male (and the newest) member of the baking club, I knew that my first production had to be a good one. And for my first time making a cake, I think I did a pretty decent job. But this isn’t a story about a two layer devil’s food concoction with milk chocolate buttercream frosting and a dark chocolate raspberry ganache. No, this is about the other baked goods that one of my co-workers consumed for his birthday this month.
This is about the cherpumple.
The bastard dessert offspring of the turducken (chicken inside a duck inside a turkey with stuffing between the layers), the cherpumple is a pumpkin pie baked inside a spice cake, topped with an apple pie baked inside of yellow cake, topped with a cherry pie baked inside of white cake. Obviously, the whole thing is frosted. It looks kinda like this (that’s the most appetizing image of one I found; they put the pumpkin/spice cake layer on upside-down though).
Last weekend, the birthday boy got one of his very own. He brought in a slice a couple of days ago for lunch (“It’s too big to have as a snack – it’s a meal itself,” he said) and was unable to consume the whole thing. So he shared it with me.
Now, I’m no stranger to ridiculous, odd, or unnecessary foods. As one of the first people on the Internet (that I know of) to eat the mythical quad-down and live, I’ve apparently built up a bit of street cred. So without hesitation, I took the carb-laden, sugary monstrosity and properly devoured it. Five minutes later, it sank to the bottom of my stomach like a sack full of bowling balls being dropped from a helicopter into a lake 200 feet below.
As I scrounged for Tums in the break-room, I pondered the existence of novelty foods within this scope – items like the foot-long cheeseburger, the macaroni and cheese quesadilla, the New York pizza burger, or the fried cheese sandwich. Why does it seem like every fast food place is just stealing ideas from This Is Why You’re Fat?
The answer, near as I can tell it, is because of two things: what food is, and what food isn’t.
Food is a utilitarian item that’s turned into entertainment and spectacle, sometimes even art. We all need to eat to survive, but we play with flavors, combinations of ingredients, the appearance of the dish, and the overall execution. We lionize our consumption through TV networks and shows devoted to food and cooking, even though they offer recipes at best, and mind-numbing food porn at worst. And the way to keep food interesting (because the palate craves variety, after all) is to increase the ridiculousness. Eating the quad-down and the cherpumple gives me stories to share with people. Consuming fish eyes, fried alligator, rattlesnake jerky and yak sausages provides me with unique experiences and memories. So creating ridiculous food items that we know are bad and unnecessary are another way to do this.
Food, however, is not a universal constant. Unlike music, movies, books and TV, there is a line between the expensive “good stuff” and the meals of the unwashed masses. Some people pay thousands of dollars for a single meal of opulence (or just a sundae) because they can; others pay as little as possible to have enough food to get them through the week because they can’t. Food cannot be universal across class and economic boundaries, because then it loses the spectacle, the wonder, and the art. So it’s compensated for by creating unholy monstrosities, replacing expense and exclusivity with revulsion and availability. In this way, the line is removed: people can be just as impressed at one’s eating a meal at French Laundry as they would be at hearing of someone eating a seven-layer burger. The fat and the grease lubricate the wheels of fascination, tying the highbrow and lowbrow together.
While the cherpumple angrily thrashed against the walls of my stomach, I wondered why I had been so excited to eat it. Wouldn’t I have been just as happy proclaiming the success of the cake that I had made myself instead of adding this matryoshka of horrors to my foodie resume? Was I attempting to reconcile the highs and lows of my eating career? Was this some deeper message that stood as an example of the recession’s affect on out palates? Or was I simply channeling George Mallory, eating it “because it was there”?
Maybe it was all of the above. Or maybe I just can’t pass up a free slice of cake-pie.
Great post Andrew, and very thought provoking. I agree that our desire for variety has led us to develop utterly ridiculous recipes. And use ‘exotic’ and rare ingredients to prepare a meal, which has led to the development of a whole industry of ‘food entertainment’.
However, unfortunately in the US, cheap food means unhealthy, greasy food that does little to pique your senses apart from your blood sugar levels. And that is the complete opposite in other parts of the world. Walk by dinnertime in a slum on the streets of Mumbai and request someone to give you a spoonful of what’s cooking. You’ll be amazed at the depth of flavor and deliciousness of what you’ll sample. And more often than not it’ll be made with a local vegetable.
But barring poverty, I think food IS a universal constant. US is an exception simply because of the way the food economy works here. And in my opinion it is totally messed up. In the rest of the world, cheap, simple food, is nutritious, delicious food.
And trust me… I wouldn’t pass up a free slice of cake-pie either… cherpumple or a plain chocolate cake
Sabera, I agree with you that in the US and some other Western countries, cheaper food has come to be synonymous with junk food. Most often, this seems to be due to the perceived convenience of getting fast food as opposed to cooking, and the street cart culture of countries like India, China and Thailand has not fully translated to the West.
However, one of the things that your comment pointed out to me is that the “universal constant” issue needs further elaboration. There are certain food items that people just cannot obtain if they are below a certain income level – think black truffles, saffron, kobe beef, caviar, and so on (to say nothing of the wine and spirits industry). There’s a social strata within the food-buying industry that categorizes certain ingredients as being more expensive, exquisite, or higher quality than others (“organic” and “natural” foods spring to mind here as well).
Even within a small field, like beef, the different cuts have different costs. As such, not all people have access to the same foods, because there’s an economic separation. There’s no such thing as “premium” music or movies; they are universal constants in that everyone has access to anything within those groups just as much as anyone else. Economic status has nothing to do with what you can listen to on the radio.
Then again, it all winds up in the same place. So maybe it is a universal constant in the end. (badump-bump)