Dessert Desertion or Assert Dessert

THE WORD
 

Recently, I have been cogitating upon eating dessert first more than I usually do. Perhaps the companion to this entry on “Be-Lied,” “The Impossibility of Eating Dessert First,” explains why. During these meditations, it occurred to me that restaurants offer a dessert menu at lunch and dinner (or dinner and supper—see “Let’s go a-suppering”), but I have never been offered a dessert menu after breakfast. Why is that?

Granted, many breakfast items have qualities of sweetness associated with dessert items—muffins, croissants, and pancakes, to name a few. Some diners may not want to follow a breakfast of Belgian waffles with a piece of lemon meringue pie for dessert—sugar overload. However, couldn’t a sweet breakfast such as a chocolate chip croissant be followed with a savory dessert, maybe chicken pot pie? What if you have eaten a savory breakfast of bacon and eggs, eggs Benedict, or steak and eggs? Shouldn’t a diner be offered a sweet dessert menu in that case?

To explore this issue, I consulted the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) on-line. Dessert is defined firstly as “A usually sweet course or dish, as of fruit, ice cream, or pastry, served at the end of a meal.” By definition, dessert is sweet, not savory, so a “savory dessert” would be an oxymoron. So much for my suggestion of following a sweet breakfast with a savory dessert! However, I still don’t know why restaurants don’t offer a dessert menu after breakfast.

To complicate matters, this definition raises a second issue regarding dessert. By definition, dessert follows the meal. Therefore, if dessert is eaten first, can it truly be considered dessert since it precedes, not follows, the meal? For the throngs of us who do eat dessert first upon occasion, is chocolate pudding still “dessert” if it precedes the meal? If it precedes the meal, does it not become a sweet entrée? By definition, it is impossible to eat dessert first!

Interestingly, the word “dessert” comes from the Old French “desservir,” meaning “to clear the table.” In terms of enjoyment, eating dessert and clearing the table are incompatable. The AHD definition refers the reader to the word “serve.” The second definition refers to mealtime: “to prepare and offer (food, for example): serve tea,” and “to place food before (someone); wait on: served the guests a wonderful dinner.” “Serve” ultimately derives from a Latin word for slave, which adds a different perspective to an unappreciated cook’s complaint of slaving over a hot stove. Putting the prefix “de-,“ “to move away from,” in front of “serve,” captures the idea of moving away from serving the meal by eating dessert.

Dictionary notwithstanding, we still face the Eat Dessert First conundrum. Should we create a new word for a “sweet course or dish” that we eat at the beginning of a meal instead of at its conclusion? To that end, on the web site Prefixsuffix.com I found several prefixes meaning “toward,” including “as-.” Therefore, I propose to combine the prefix “as-“ with the base of “dessert,” “sert” to create a new noun, “assert,” which I assert (verb) means “A usually sweet course or dish, as of fruit, ice cream, or pastry, served at the BEGINNING of a meal,” thereby saving the intent of the Eat Dessert First movement! Perhaps, the slogan should go “Assert Dessert First!”

By the way, just to be a contrarian, the next time I eat breakfast out, I intend to ask for a dessert menu at the end of my meal. After all, chocolate pudding by any other name—AND at any point in the meal—tastes just as sweet.

NOTES: My stellar editor and husband, Richard Seegal, added a few musings of his own on the subject of dessert. First, he noted the phrase “just desserts” which refers to someone receiving justice. An on-line search led me to “Grammarist” and the distinction between “just deserts” and “just desserts.” Because of differences in the pronunciation and meaning of “desert,” with the emphasis on the first syllable and meaning “a barren or desolate area,” and with the emphasis on the second syllable and meaning “something that is deserved or merited,” people frequently mistake the phrase for “just desserts.”

Secondly, he pointed out that a lack of a sweet course after a meal would be a “dessert desert.” I add that children who do not get dessert because they did not eat their vegetables get their “just deserts.”