SC - Sweet and Savory

[Tara Sersen]

Ras, your post made me think about this in a way I never had before.  I now realize
that the line isn't between "sweet" and "savory" so much as between "meal food"
and "dessert food".  Sweet and Savory often fall into those catagories also,
but not exclusively.

For instance, people are shocked when I put cinnamon on chicken.  Cinnamon is
a "dessert" flavor - it's for cookies and sticky buns.  When I put black pepper
in the batter for french toast, the initial reaction is that pepper is for meal
food, not sweet food.  You put pepper on your eggs, you put nutmeg in your french
toast.  Not that people complain after they TASTE it... just while watching
me make it.

Cheesecake is a dessert food even if it isn't sweet (at least good cheesecake
isn't.)  Cottage cheese and yogurt are meal foods, even though they are sweet
(except frozen yogurt, which is very highly sweetened, and even so caused a
sensation when it was introduced.)  Carrots, although very sweet, are meal food.
 Even if you pour fat and sugar on them (glazed carrots,) they're meal food,
not dessert.  And you will surprise people by flavouring them with nutmeg or
cinnamon.  Ice cream is a dessert.  How shocked are people when they learn that
half a cantalope with a scoop of vanilla ice cream is served for breakfast in
Pennsy Dutch households?  Peanuts and peanut butter are dessert foods (except
peanut butter sandwiches, and even those are treats.)  African peanut soup makes
people's eyebrows go up.  

The majority of cross-over items seem to be fruit sauces, or whole bits of fruit.
 Even those are only in pre-approved circumstances.  I got a very surprised
reaction last Thansgiving when I brought a stuffing filled with turkey sausage
and lots of dried fruit.

So, you're right.  The line isn't betwen Sweet and Savory - but the line is
there.  There are foods that you simply don't combine, or serve for particular
purposes.  When you do, people are always pleased - and they think you're a
genius for thinking to do it.  But, they would never think to do it themselves,
or even to order it in a restaurant.

Interestingly, there also seems to be a bit of a line between hot and cold foods.
 Hot applesauce?  Cold meat pies?  Shocking!

- -Magdalena