One of the great things about angel food cake is it does not want any gluten formation, so I can make it with gluten free flour substitutes for my sister, and the rest of the family gets a cake which is every bit as good as it would be made with real flour! It also helps that it was always my sister's favorite cake before she was diagnosed with Celiac .
Oh man, as someone with some kind of gluten intolernace, thank you. I never thought about that. It's been absolutely brutal trying to avoid gluten and the texture is definitely the issue with most gluten-free products. For whatever reason I never thought of that aspect for Angel Food Cake. I may need to try making it with gluten free flour now!
@@Tinil0 I have no issues, and can't even kinda with most gluten free stuff, but angel food cake works great, and it works great for making a roux to thicken most sauces.
Whenever I'm preparing something in the kitchen, an angel's food cake appears on one shoulder and a devil's food cake appears on the other, and they both start shouting a ton of advice on what I should do, and every time I have to tell them, "Shut up, guys! I'm just microwaving a pot pie! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Devil’s food cake was created when a midwestern woman made a deal with the devil to beat another midwestern woman’s angel food cake at the local fair. The angel food cake lady made a deal with the devil the next year and that’s how we got red devil’s food, or red velvet.
I always thought that the extra richness of devil’s food cake and the lighter texture and less yolks of angel’s food cake were to illustrate that less rich food was seen as more godly and temperate (not that cake is a temperate food to eat, it’s a dessert but still) and thus the dichotomy
I wonder if "devil's food" has any correlation to the etymology for "deviled" foods, such as "deviled eggs" or "deviled ham". Which to my understanding just meant "heavily spiced/flavoured", perhaps linking back to this idea that "pleasure is sinful, and to be good and pure you must rid yourself of temptations from excessive pleasure".
tasting history said people used to talk about it like “if an angel ate it they’d still be light enough to fly back to heaven” or something I’m paraphrasing nor do I know how accurate it is but it’s really cool!
@@DingsNotNota OP is not asking why it is called ANGEL food cake. He is asking why it is called Angel FOOD cake. The word "food" seems redundant and unnecessary. Same with Devil's Food Cake.
@@MatthewTheWanderer oh I thought it was relevant cause ‘angel food’ cause they would be the one eating it like fish food or something but I see the redundancy now I just wanted to talk about it :D
It's also important to recognize that in neoplatonic and some abrahamic philosophies, darkness and absence of the senses is believed to be the unadulterated essence of God, so darkness is not always considered malevolent in western culture
You should make a cake that has layers of angel and devil so you can get both in the same slice. Either cook like 6 shallow cakes or slice a taller cake.
You could do that, but it could only be two layers and the angel would have to be on top. The sponge is super delicate so too much weight will just squish it.
@@HeatherSchrivener-el2mxExactly, I made one for my sister's birthday. Turn out angel food cake super delicate sponge structure don't like being squished. It's great if you eat it right after baking, but the leftovers in the fridge just taste like a thick and egg smelly brownie.
I always assumed the name for Angel’s Food Cake came from its texture more than anything else. It was the texture that struck me, and I would assume would have struck people back then as well, especially since lighter cakes would have been harder to pull off before modern leaveners and electric mixers.
100% - like it probably doesn't even have anything to do with religion. It's just, "this is like something that cloud people would eat. Let's see, who lives in the clouds... uh angels I guess" and then when you have that name, and you make the opposite cake, you name it the opposite thing. It's just like... why go reaching for this ridiculous racism idea; more of Adam's white guilt he seems so fond of.
This was my instant hypothesis too. For me, texture was the most relevant part followed by color followed distantly by caloric content. I agree with Adam that the calorie connection is likely entirely modern, it's just fundamentally a very modern perspective. Angel's food cake to me is fundamentally, more than anything else, "light", as in fluffy and airy and...okay, let me go on a short tangent, why on earth do we not have a general-purpose antonym for dense? There are lots of words that KINDA describe things being "not-dense", like light, thing, airy, loose, etc but as you can tell from me having to say "not-dense", there is no word that serves most purposes. All those words capture an aspect of "not-dense" but can't really be used in all contexts. That's frustrating. ANYWAY, yeah, angel food cake is not dense. Devil's food cake is named in opposition to that and is dense.
i think he mentioned that but not that it's asian. black is wealth was also mentioned. after reading some chinese books, there seems to be a strong association between: snow = winter = death, lack of blood = pale, and bones be white
I love these videos where he covers odd, niche topics like this one. These are things I often wonder but don't have the time or energy to look up so it's like he's doing my homework for me.
The Devil's food cake being a chocolate version (at least in the first recipe you showed) also plays into the relationship between the angels and their fallen counterparts, the devil and the demons. It's been tempted by chocolate and has been made impure in a sense, in a parallel to the demons being angels plus sin or selfish desire or whatever
I like the segment that reminds that (white = purity) is not strictly some anglo-european idea but exists in many cultures, including Africa and the Near East and south east asia which all have dark skin tones. Most of southeast Europe was olive-skinned anyway, and that's where most of the Christians resided
Angel's food cake makes sense as being white, light and fluffy. In the cultural context it was created in, those qualities would be associated with the divine. Therefore its opposite, which is dense, dark and moist, is the devil's food. I dont think its origin is explicitly racist, but it might have been influenced by such.
I figure the people making these cakes were probably just people messing around in the kitchen or maybe a restaurant context and thought it would be fun to call them as such. They weren't like head priests or anything right? It was probably just the cultural feeling at the time to call them angel or devils food because it kind of had that feeling to it. All these other influences may have had some effect of course, but I doubt they thought that hard about it if they were, it's just cake after all.
Yeah I think blaming racism is a big reach. I’ve always figured angels food because of the light and airy texture is angel or heaven like. Devils food was the opposite dense and thick.
@@markbollinger1343The entire point of things like "racist predispositions" is that they're unconscious - an implicit understanding of white=good in the context of the 1900s US definitely would have a racist component because those attitudes were thoroughly embedded in society at the time and influenced everything. That effect is much less pronounced today but still very much exists, and recognising that is an important part of stopping it (remember that the entire point is that it's unconscious and fairly subtle, it doesn't make you a member of the KKK if you recognise that unconscious bias exists)
Finally somebody pointing out the whole sun and ground thing. I could totally make sense that if some of these made an angel food cake that's super light area and white and you make a super dense heavy chocolate thing you're going to name it the opposite. It didn't happen that long ago pretty sure people still damed things the same silly ironic way we do now.
@@darcieclements4880 so basically it's just: Light Soft and Fluffy Up Above the Sky CLOUD ⬆️☁️ ⬆️☁️ VS 🪨⬇️ Heavy Dense Down Below the Ground EARTH ⬇️🪨
Hey Adam. I don't know how often you check your comments, but I think an interesting topic for you to cover is one on food preservatives and potentially using them for home cooking. I was searching for a bottle of ranch the other day, and I found that none of the brands on the shelf had all of the following A) buttermilk based, B) No Added Sugar, C) Not Fat-Free. Those that are sugar free are also fat free, and even then, many of them were dairy free as well. Fats don't particularly scare me in food, and I'd rather get my sugars from foods that are truly meant to have them, and so had the thought of making my own ranch from scratch, but giving it the same industry preservatives to keep it shelf stable for months, as I don't particularly use a lot of dressing all at once. However, as I previously mentioned, a lot of the resources on the internet, or at least the resources that float to the top of the search, don't really explain how to work with them. They may explain what they are, or give out "natural alternatives," but there's very little on how we home cooks can take advantage of them. I thought with your affection for sodium citrate--another "industry chemical"--this could be a topic you would be interested in.
Readin old novels from the 19th century, the devil was the color black. The devil resided in hell, a place of a lot of fire and, if you have wood fireplace, it can be really sooty, it gets things black. Hell was very sooty so the devil was described as being black as oppose to red nowadays.
Don't know if you will read this but in Italy we have a "Torta Paradiso" ("paradise cake") which basically is the angel cake plus icing sugar on top. So yes, the whiteness may indeed recall the clouds. Paradise is basically just clouds and angels live there.
yeah, I don't think the Western Racist explanation is the main one. It's far more probable that Angel's Food is named such because it's very pale, lightly flavored, & fluffy; while Devil's Food is the opposite being Dense, darker, & strongly flavored
I think its pretty insane to even bring that up as an explanation. Just forcing this whole inherent American racism into places that show absolutely no evidence or reason for that to be the case
@@ancellery6430 yeah, i tried to not cause Adam of letting his Gringo-brain project racism into everything that's not racism. But that's literally what it is, Adam let his Gringo brain project racism into something that isn't racist
@@ancellery6430 Devil's food cake is of American origin though??? What do you mean "places that show absolutely no evidence or reason for that to be the case"? When did racism stop being a VERY significant cultural force in the late 1800s and early 1900s when these cakes appeared? Racism encompasses much more than chattel slavery and separate-but-equal. Anything that significant to a culture is going to be diffused throughout all kinds of things. I mean, just think of the old Christian antipathy for left-handedness, that was far less important to the culture and it still gave us words like "sinister" and the homonymizing of "right" and "right. Slavery was the core economic system in the US South for centuries, white supremacist racism the ideology justifying its existence, the expansion of the United States into indigenous Native American lands, etc... you can't expect that not to have an effect on the culture.
I don't think the racist explanation holds much water, since there was already "Chocolate Angel's Food Cake" (same cake but brown because of the cocoa in it), it certainly has to do with it being denser, fattier and heavier.
We've got cereal, bread and eggs We've got bread and cheese and butter and eggs We've got eggs or cereal and cheese We've got bread and eggs or butter and eggs We've got eggs and we also have a goat
I’d heard that angels food cake was named as such because one early author described it as “so light and fluffy that an angel could eat it and still fly up to heaven”
"Sour milk" and "buttermilk" are not the same thing in recipes written before modern refrigeration. Buttermilk back then actually referred to the pallid liquid leftover from churning butter. Sour milk is what we today call buttermilk, which is regular un-churned milk inoculated with bacteria.
Thanks, I wondered what was up with that. I noticed that his buttermilk was really thick and not drained of its nutrition like I'm used to see with the liquid leftover from churning butter. Wikipedia's article on buttermilk also isn't very clear about this. It's using a lot of "originally" and "traditionally" and it's really confusing that it's just a completely different product now in the US, because round these parts we're still drinking "the old-fashioned product".
Maybe, but I honestly think allegations of racism is us overlaying our modern sensibilities on this. Not that there wasn't racism, but I don't think they would have bothered to express it so subtly. If anything, the racism and the concepts of angels vs. devils are both independently attached to the concept that white = good and black = bad, but correlation is not causation.
concepts of the "in group" and the "out group" predate religion. Concepts about the physical appearance of demons were based on the physical appearance of people from neighboring tribes that were considered enemies. The concept of angels and devils came from tribal loyalty - you convince yourself that your tribe are the angels that they're "better"/"higher" than the other tribe so that you can murder them without contradicting your morals. It just so happened that Judeo-Christianity had the largest population size and so white skin was considered "good". It's the same concept in East Asia (in group vs out-group = colorism) but amplified by colonialism by white Europeans who needed to convince East Asians that they were "better" than darker asians so that they wouldn't revolt.
@@johnjungkook2721 That's a load of horse-pucky. Jews and Christians started out brown and there are still many Jews and even Christians of Middle Eastern decent, not to mention there are very strong Christian presences in Africa and South America, as well. Even many slaves in North America became Christians because, if you actually read the Bible instead of listening to conservative Christian headcanon, God loves all his children equally. The only place where whiteness was considered to be angelic was among Christians of European decent, and even there, the number of them that believe that varies heavily by the era you're talking about. In Asia, lighter skin color was thought to be "better" because, much like in medieval Europe, poor people had to work in the fields all day, which made them dark through tanning, while rich people's lifestyles had them indoors most of the time, which meant their untanned skin was lighter, making lighter skin better if you judge people by wealth. That thinking predated colonialism by centuries, if not millennia.
On deviled foods: there's a class aspect there, too, potentially, I think? Getting pepper from south-east Asia to western Europe made it unimaginably expensive to all but the peak of the aristocracy until the colonial era and its ocean "trading" (violence? what violence?), so any heavily spiced food would have been associated with luxury, which is never far from decadence. The compounds that create the sensations that made the Spice Islands flora so valuable might have also been produced by local plants (I am not enough of a botanical historian, if such a thing exists, to do more than guess), but I can see the humour-balancing Medieval church taking a dim view. That said saffron used to grow in Essex, so I may be revealing other gaps in my knowledge.
@ I don’t dispute that; I was more driving at the idea that the only flavouring available to the peasantry was salt is facially ridiculous. Herbs, berries etc all native to the British isles, so the messes of postage would have tasted of something. I am not aware of any such that duplicates pepperiness though, and chillies wouldn’t have appeared until post Columbian exchange, so I stand by devilled as spicy decadence. On a related note, having grown up with the Redwall books, I had a go at hotroot soup a few years back. I assumed the hotroot woukd be horseradish, as that grows here; I was a bit disappointed that my soup was cl,pletely lacking in fire. From which I learnt that whatever makes horseradish burn is deactivated by heat, and the otters had access to ginger. I guess mustard and horseradish could be added to the cheap local devising things on that score; watercress less so.
I always thought that the Devil's food was a reference to decadence in the chocolate. Theologically, I've always been a fan of the passage in Good Omens where upon describing an army of angels staring down an army of fallen angels, they mention how an expert, if they looked really closely, might be able to tell which was which. :)
In cultural ideas of other colours being "good" that I know, white means death in some Asian cultures (worn at funerals), and white wedding dresses are an adoption of Western style, with at least traditional Japanese wedding kimonos being red, and I knwo even now that Indian wedding dresses are red (usually with a lot of gold embroidery). Black is an Ancient Egyptian colour of fertility, because of river soil being that colour.
Even white wedding dresses are a very recent idea. For a long time in the West they were traditionally blue (hence "something borrowed, something blue"). Then Queen Victoria or somebody got married in a white dress and everyone went nuts over the idea.
@stevethepocket Yeah, I have also heard that prior to the white trend, wedding dresses in America were often just normal dresses, just a brand new one fresh for the wedding which would then become their church best for a good deal of time afterwards.
How I always took the differences: Devil's: very tempting and maybe not all that good for you. That much chocolate is not good for the glucose levels Angel's: light and fluffy, like a cloud. Also, it doesn't taste like much so let's throw some fresh berries on there for flavor (and color), so it must be good for you
Not to be pedantic, but chocolate is fairly healthy. It’s usually just coco solids (protein) and coco butter (fat). Neither of them should be nearly as bad for glucose as plain white flour and sugar in the angels food cake. As such, the devils version is probably healthier. The reason most chocolate is bad is that it’s also quite bitter, so sugar is added. The same might be true for devils food cake, where proportionally more sugar is added to counteract the bitter chocolate. But usually I find deserts of chocolate variety actually have less total sugar than non-chocolate kinds.
I lean towards the theory that the angel food was thus called because it was light, fluffy, and cloud-like and then someone made Devil's food to be the opposite. But I think it probably also draws on a notion that goes back to heretical groups and even some orthodox groups in the early church (through the influence of second-century neo-platonic thought) that physical pleasure is evil. That idea is rooted in the neo-platonic idea that matter itself is evil while the soul is good. We should focus on the soul and escaping this material world rather than on satisfying bodily desires. Thus, rich foods that bring more pleasure have a certain level of guilt associated with them. But for what it is worth as a pastor, this idea is pretty flatly contradicted in Scripture. Song of Solomon celebrates physical sexual pleasure within the proper context. Ecclesiastes says that even though this world is broken and much we do is futile, we should enjoy the good things of creation. And at a broader level, the Bible does not end with everyone leaving the physical world and "going to heaven." It ends with Heaven coming down to the physical world. The Christian hope is not escaping creation, but being raised physically from the dead and enjoying creation healed from its brokenness. The Bible is very pro-physicality and pro-pleasure. Even the prohibitions on things like promiscuity and gluttony are to set pleasure in its proper place and thus maximize it, not stifle it.
Cheat days once a week feel better than eating like crap every day, and sex as an expression of monogamous love feels better than an impulsive college hook-up. IDK why more people don't realize this
Very good explanation. I always find it so weird that people associate Christianity with this anti-material sentiment when gnosticism was a heresy for a (many) reason. I was speaking with my priest about alcohol and what he said boiled down to moderation. If it makes you sin, then don't consume it, but the pleasure itself isn't bad. Psalm 104 even says "wine gladdens the heart of man" as a part of a psalm all about the wonderful creation God has made!
You think that in the course of naming the cake, people were influenced by the fact that Gnostics in the Late Antique and Heretics in the Medieval period believed that the sensory realm of pleasure was evil and subcreated by an evil god? It seems more likely that the much bigger influence in Western culture was the extremely common and orthodox belief that gluttony - all intemperate eating, usually "eating for pleasure alone" - is a sin, no? Gluttony defined roughly that way sat as one of the _big ones_ for over a thousand years, you could say nearly two, in the dominant Western cultural consciousness. While people often think like Gnostics in subtle ways they aren't aware of, and I get your theological point about pleasure in Christianity, it seems like the cake naming thing's pretty straightforward on this front.
@ I’m arguing that understanding gluttony as eating for pleasure is one of the subtle influences of Gnosticism. It was likely preserved through monastic asceticism where people thought that the more pleasure you rejected, the closer to God you were. Unfortunately, some of the most influential theologians in history (Augustine, Jerome, chrysostom, Thomas, etc.) were ascetics to one extent or another and so their influence still lingers even today.
Yeah, as a Catholic myself, I was a little disappointed with how Adam seemed to be subtly thumbing his nose at "those silly Abrahamic religions, thinking angels are in the clouds". At least he didn't explicitly make fun of the faith, which is kinda nice. Regarding asceticism, the Catholic idea behind it isn't quite the same as the Gnostic idea. It's not that the things you're abstaining from are bad - they're actually quite good in themselves. The problem is with us - our disordered wills often prefer lesser goods to greater goods. So, it can be helpful in the spiritual life to deprive yourself of those lesser earthly goods, to more freely and fully adhere to the greater spiritual goods. This is the reason we fast, and Jesus expected his disciples to fast regularly.
I'm impressed with the amount of primary sources being searched to attempt to figure out what was the earliest mention of Angel and Devil's food cake. Somethings we can plausibly speculate as we will never fully know.
I have a theory, newly formed. As you cut the Angel food cake, could it be that cross section looks similar to a wing. This really depends on the shape and style of cake pan. Anyway, not for nothing.
Thank you. I appreciate your presupposition that your listening (viewing) audience is somewhat intelligent and can readily understand your explanations and theories.
I think a lot of this race discussion is modern (current) discussion and ideas being plastered onto older terms and ideas. If you look for issues, you will find them if you look hard enough. Devils food cake is called devils food because it's rich and decadent. It's the opposite of angles food cake, which is light and airy. Period.
Gluttony is also a cardinal sin, so the richer cake would be seen as gluttonous compared to a plain sponge cake. Adam is starting to get exhausting with his social/political reaching. I've stopped watching this guy actively.
the term came about in a period where racial tensions were a bigger discussion than they are now-the only modern ideas adam introduces is that those cultural keystones were wrong. it might not be the origin but i don’t think we can ignore the connections to whiteness as a symbol of purity, especially in 1900s america and especially if we’re running by the idea that it’s color which gives it its name. again, there is no direct etymology for the term. i’m not so sure that you saying “period” just closes the discussion on a topic with no bound origin.
for the record, i don’t subscribe to that theory. but i do think that he provides compelling enough proof to take the color of the cake into account, and in doing so, we can’t ignore the semiotics of color in that timeframe. it’s not like that’s the only presented theory. he says the same thing you do, man.
My Guy the early 1900s were the height of Jim Crow where an extreme amount of effort was put into explicitly racist legislation to ensure black people were completely unable to effectively participate in society.
purity with white or clear could be from flour manufacturing. The best tasting flour is paler and the lightest texture is the most free of chaff and hull.
5:58 in some parts of India, coconuts are called "shrifal" which means the fruit of Lakshmi or the divine/noble fruit, because of auspicious connections
My guess is that 'white' and 'thick chocolate' cake were seen as boring terms by the English speaking culinary community of the time so they saw it fit to give familiar and dramatic names to these recipes, the most ironic being 'angel food cake' seeing as to how cake is already more 'gluttonous' than bread, with devil's food cake being the more obvious extreme
For me I always took the density/lightness angle to be the primary differentiator. If it was purely about the color, then the idea of a "chocolate angel's food cake" as you show would be nonsensical. For me I always assumed that it was because angels' food was light and airy while devil's food was dense and rich, and probably also leaning a bit into the temptation/gluttony angle a bit for the latter.
Maybe a little of everything all at once. I don’t think too much thought ever goes into naming foods historically. It like, “yeah that sound good” and a few subconscious associations. I never liked angels food cake because it had a cottony texture, like cotton candy which I also don’t like. Devil’’ food cake on the other hand, I would eat an entire cake if given the opportunity.
Fascinating video. I believe that the increased acidity in the angel food cake recipe is to stabilize the meringue, not lighten the color or to leaven the cake. The browning that takes place due to higher pH is only really seen on the exterior of the cake, where, if anything, angel food cakes are usually darker than sponge cakes. Also, while egg whites are slightly alkaline, angel food cakes generally do not need a leavening agent, as there is already air contained in a thick network of egg protein. I'm sure you are aware of all of this, but your phrasing made it a bit misleading.
Alternative explanation for the “Angel” part of the name - with the lack of egg yolks or butter it’s a very low-fat cake, so you’re being “good” by eating it, good like an angel. Nowadays with what we know about sugar the sugar content might cause someone to choose a different name, but it’s too late, the name has stuck. I have no evidence for that, just a hypothesis.
Now, I know nothing of etymology, but my guess is that angel food cake was called that due to how it's not really too indulgent, light and airy, a bit like a cloud, things such as that, whilst devil food cake is dense, indulgent, all that jazz.
We also can’t forget how influential religion was in the US after the Second Great Awakening and all the religious groups that had a thing with bland food. We focus on the Puritans around Thanksgiving and the founding of Massachusetts, but we also forget how they had their hand in basically every positive social movement that formed in the US from the 1820s until the 1920s. It wasn’t just Kellogg and eating bland food, the Puritans had their hand in the Abolition Movement, the first 2 waves of Feminism and Evangelical Christianity. As much as you like to point out racism, it’s not the only thing that’s happened in American history for better or worse. The Puritans were very involved in American history and have a lot of impacts we still see today. History is rarely as simple as one phenomena having complete run of a society. Also, the first Fannie Farmer cookbook was published in the late 1800s in Boston. Which was the first modern cookbook with modern measurements. So, you can’t just ignore the fact that the Puritan Heartland had a massive impact in the most basic parts of cooking in the US, how we write recipes.
We always made an angel’s food cake with left over egg whites, after we made a fairy food cake which called for all egg yolks. Never considered those in conjunction with a devil’s food cake … we just loved cake! TFS.
One other thing to consider, doesn't necessarily denote anything in particular but is still an interesting coincidence, is that fact that we also have "Lava Cakes" where the lava in said cake is just hot fudge. Could further solidify how people saw the dark chocolate cakes as coming from the fiery pits of hell... or it could just be an evolution of the devil cake playing further into the whole thing for fun.
Angel food cake is so easy to just but pre-made at the store that I've never considered bothering to make it from scratch. But the concept of a chocolate angel food cake has me just intrigued enough to copy that recipe down and file it away for possible future use.
Another point for why white was, and is, considered pure. Metals which are full of impurities become darker, so it was a mark of quality. If you're iron pot was of a darker color than someone elses, you'd know that it had more impurities in it. Same goes for obsidian, the reason for it's color is because of all of the impurities it has. Pretty mcuh any Christian people in the world has the black = bad, white = good. But not always. Orthodox Christian clergy and monks wear black because it also symbolizes repentance. It's contextual. We don't actually think colors are evil, it's just symbolism. God made colors, so colors aren't evil. Also, you got a lot of the theology wrong, but I won't fault you cause I assume you aren't Christian.
I couldn't read through all the comments but the one word I didn't hear Adam say was "red." At least in modern recipes, Devils' food cake often has buttermilk, cocoa, and baking soda, with the reaction producing a redder cake. A chocolate cake often has melted chocolate.
My guy, are you putting mayo in your Ambrosia? Do people do that? My family has always used whipped cream of some sort, with sweat soaked mandarin sliced, maraschino cherries, pineapples chunks, walnuts and mini marshmallows.
my dad, born in 1930, said (when he was alive) that "devil's food" (cake, eggs, etc) was bc it tasted so good/decadent ... and that "angel's food cake" was bc it tasted of nothing tempting.
Angel Food Cake is such a staple of my childhood. It was always made for my dad's birthday, filled with cherries and smothered in cool-whip. It was so fluffy 85lb preteen me would eat a whole cake
I think that's basically what Japanese cheesecake is. At least at one of my local sushi joints after a meal they'll give you a slice of fluffy cheesecake that is similar to Angel's food cake.
Fyi, I am pushing 60 years old and I have never heard angel food cake with the apostrophe attached. Devil's food cake almost always with the S though the apostrophe is a 50/50 proposition.
I would assume the increased side surface area allows the egg white batter to cling to them and rise more, resulting in a more even and light crumb than a typical round or square pan, where the batter will sag and sink in the center
@@scoobertdoobert7893 Absolutely! The walls are steep and give the cake plenty of room to rise. Of course, the cake must also be cooled upside down in the pan to maintain hight and texture. Bundt pans are ideal for this! You can absolutely make angel food cakes in any pan, but it's much easier to get the right texture with a bundt.
I like how different languages created words based on similar concepts but came up with different words for them. French has blanc which is white- blank. Some people might describe blank to mean a black void, others might say a foggy white environment. And looking at Old English, their word blac meant more what we describe white to be. Super cool etymology stuff
4:33 Adam, notion of bread of angels goes back to the times of the New Testament. The idea of 'Bread of Heaven', that being the Manna of Moses, was considered by many Jewish groups to be the food of Angels given to man, as given witness by the Talmud (according to Brant Pitre). Early Christian writers drew from this when referencing the Lord's Supper, calling it the Bread of Angels, for they believed it to be the Real Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It was common theme in hymography, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas's 'Sacris Solemniis'. It was overall a common food Etymology that was quite literal, only reducing to metaphor by the turn of the 16th Century.
Fluffy cloud cake vs. Super choc cake. Choc as in short for chocolate of course, but also sounding like "shock" as in the shock devouring such a delight can give you.
Adam, I recognize that very page and both of recipes in that book you have. I used to own that exact same book and, lost it about 25 years ago during a move. Please, what's the name of that book? I'd like to try and find a copy of it again.
An excerpt from "Jesus and the Disinherited" by Howard Thurman in 1949: "Religion is thus made a defender and guarantor of the presumptions. God, for all practical purposes, is imaged as an elderly, benign white man, seated on a white throne, with bright, white light emanating from his countenance. Angels are blonds and brunets suspended in the air around his throne to be his messengers and execute his purposes. Satan is viewed as being red with the glow of fire. But the imps, the messengers of the devil, are black. The phrase “black as an imp” is a stereotype."
Loved this on so many levels. Also, the "devilled" etymology reminded me of the reasoning behind Mr Kellogg's invention of Corn Flakes, as pointed out in your respective video/s. I would be interested in the history and etymology of the South African angel's food, if you think of making a video on it.
Adam, the angel food cake is light and fluffy, like a cloud. Right? This baker has been making them for years, and popular with those looking for a lighter dessert. Right? Great topped with berries and whipped cream. Right? The similar cake you mentioned Sunshine cake is a chiffon. Similarly light but egg yolk bakes a richer sponge cake.
Ive been watching and loving your videos for a long time now and I'm kinda sad abou you moving away from RUclips cause you were a content creator that for some reason matched my hobbies and interests (I'm a professional and passionate cook, former powerlifter, bodybuilding enthusiast and a metalhead 😂) anyway I just wanted to say thank you for all the information forward videos you have made to further educate even people like me who cooks for hundreds of people daily.
I always interpreted the name "angelfood cake" as "angels are soft and fragile creatures, who'll subsist on food as airy and ephemeral as a cake that is mildly sweet, mildly lemony, and very very light" I then interpreted "devilfood cake" as "well we took the concept of angelfood cake and flipped it on its head"- heavy, rich, bold-flavored...
6:19 reminds me of that scene in Django with Leonardo Di Caprio... When Candie fininshes his "negotiations" with Django and Schultz he very particularly says they will be serving "Hwite Cake"
Hey Adam, did you know bananas hold better in the fridge? The peels will turn and go dark, yet the inside will be perfectly ripe and take much longer to go bad! I saw your bananas on the counter, and thought you might find the reason they don’t brown fast in the fridge interesting!
Adam, im very impressed that you filmed a 17+ minute video and more with different camera shots without taking a bite of either cakes…
I can only assume he's a robot, I don't know how anyone could go so long without absolutely devouring those slices
thats one slice each of 2 whole cakes. i think we're left to assume he'd already had enough to be satisfied before filming lol
Maybe he ate some other slices of the cake before the takes to prevent temptation?
@@thefareplayer2254 thats the only logical explanation, I would’ve absolutely devoured those slices
And that's not even counting another 20 minutes of outtakes!
Wait wait… out-cakes! 😄👍
One of the great things about angel food cake is it does not want any gluten formation, so I can make it with gluten free flour substitutes for my sister, and the rest of the family gets a cake which is every bit as good as it would be made with real flour! It also helps that it was always my sister's favorite cake before she was diagnosed with Celiac .
Oh man, as someone with some kind of gluten intolernace, thank you. I never thought about that. It's been absolutely brutal trying to avoid gluten and the texture is definitely the issue with most gluten-free products. For whatever reason I never thought of that aspect for Angel Food Cake. I may need to try making it with gluten free flour now!
@@Tinil0 I have no issues, and can't even kinda with most gluten free stuff, but angel food cake works great, and it works great for making a roux to thicken most sauces.
Whenever I'm preparing something in the kitchen, an angel's food cake appears on one shoulder and a devil's food cake appears on the other, and they both start shouting a ton of advice on what I should do, and every time I have to tell them, "Shut up, guys! I'm just microwaving a pot pie! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
just eat them
Ah the Devils already won, such a shame, such A Shame...
(Joking)
@@seanplaysgames2551lol
Devil’s food cake was created when a midwestern woman made a deal with the devil to beat another midwestern woman’s angel food cake at the local fair.
The angel food cake lady made a deal with the devil the next year and that’s how we got red devil’s food, or red velvet.
Honestly this is more believable than the racism theory
I always thought that the extra richness of devil’s food cake and the lighter texture and less yolks of angel’s food cake were to illustrate that less rich food was seen as more godly and temperate (not that cake is a temperate food to eat, it’s a dessert but still) and thus the dichotomy
I mean, look at the Kelloggs and their corn flakes, and on Sylvester Graham and his crackers...
This! Devil's food cake is positively *sinful* while Angel's food is so light and fluffy and airy
Devil's cake is black, Angel's cake is white.
I thought is was like angel live in sky so cake is soft like cloud and devil live underground so cake is heavy like dirt.
I wonder if "devil's food" has any correlation to the etymology for "deviled" foods, such as "deviled eggs" or "deviled ham". Which to my understanding just meant "heavily spiced/flavoured", perhaps linking back to this idea that "pleasure is sinful, and to be good and pure you must rid yourself of temptations from excessive pleasure".
i personally never understood the "food" part of "food cake". why not just call it an angel's cake lol
tasting history said people used to talk about it like “if an angel ate it they’d still be light enough to fly back to heaven” or something I’m paraphrasing nor do I know how accurate it is but it’s really cool!
I think it's quite cute that it's angel's food vs devil's food
@@DingsNotNota OP is not asking why it is called ANGEL food cake. He is asking why it is called Angel FOOD cake. The word "food" seems redundant and unnecessary. Same with Devil's Food Cake.
maybe its "angel's food" cake vs angel's "food cake"
@@MatthewTheWanderer oh I thought it was relevant cause ‘angel food’ cause they would be the one eating it like fish food or something but I see the redundancy now I just wanted to talk about it :D
It's also important to recognize that in neoplatonic and some abrahamic philosophies, darkness and absence of the senses is believed to be the unadulterated essence of God, so darkness is not always considered malevolent in western culture
You pulled this out of your butt. Which neoplatonist wrote this? Which Abrahamic? A Gnostic sex cult?
St Dionysios calls God the "Divine Darkness" in his theological writings regarding apophatic theology
@@lordspoice5192 my reply before yours got eaten somehow but are you Orthodox too???
Where did you learn this? Can I read so myself?
@@Barakon it's in his work the Mystical Theology
You should make a cake that has layers of angel and devil so you can get both in the same slice. Either cook like 6 shallow cakes or slice a taller cake.
I would eat the heck out of a cake like that.
mortal's cake
You could do that, but it could only be two layers and the angel would have to be on top. The sponge is super delicate so too much weight will just squish it.
"Dantes Inferno"
@@HeatherSchrivener-el2mxExactly, I made one for my sister's birthday. Turn out angel food cake super delicate sponge structure don't like being squished. It's great if you eat it right after baking, but the leftovers in the fridge just taste like a thick and egg smelly brownie.
I always assumed the name for Angel’s Food Cake came from its texture more than anything else. It was the texture that struck me, and I would assume would have struck people back then as well, especially since lighter cakes would have been harder to pull off before modern leaveners and electric mixers.
Actually, it's usually kinda like rubber.
@@kenmore01if it's kinda like rubber you're doing something wrong...
100% - like it probably doesn't even have anything to do with religion. It's just, "this is like something that cloud people would eat. Let's see, who lives in the clouds... uh angels I guess" and then when you have that name, and you make the opposite cake, you name it the opposite thing. It's just like... why go reaching for this ridiculous racism idea; more of Adam's white guilt he seems so fond of.
@@aiaioioi They likely let it shrink. Without the fluff, normally because the cake was too wide, it gets a wee bit ruberry
This was my instant hypothesis too. For me, texture was the most relevant part followed by color followed distantly by caloric content. I agree with Adam that the calorie connection is likely entirely modern, it's just fundamentally a very modern perspective. Angel's food cake to me is fundamentally, more than anything else, "light", as in fluffy and airy and...okay, let me go on a short tangent, why on earth do we not have a general-purpose antonym for dense? There are lots of words that KINDA describe things being "not-dense", like light, thing, airy, loose, etc but as you can tell from me having to say "not-dense", there is no word that serves most purposes. All those words capture an aspect of "not-dense" but can't really be used in all contexts. That's frustrating. ANYWAY, yeah, angel food cake is not dense. Devil's food cake is named in opposition to that and is dense.
Conversely, in some Asian cultures, white is the color of mourning. Chinese funerals with white limos as an example.
i think he mentioned that but not that it's asian. black is wealth was also mentioned.
after reading some chinese books, there seems to be a strong association between: snow = winter = death, lack of blood = pale, and bones be white
People wear white during funerals in Hinduism as well.
@@gabbonoo also that when wood or fabric get old and worn down, they turn into a grey/white color
I love these videos where he covers odd, niche topics like this one. These are things I often wonder but don't have the time or energy to look up so it's like he's doing my homework for me.
> Money is the devil's food
> Devil's food cake is very rich
basically they're just opposites:
Light Mild Soft and Fluffy Up Above the Sky CLOUD ⬆️☁️
⬆️☁️ VS 🪨⬇️
Heavy Rich Dense Down Below the Ground EARTH ⬇️🪨
The Devil's food cake being a chocolate version (at least in the first recipe you showed) also plays into the relationship between the angels and their fallen counterparts, the devil and the demons.
It's been tempted by chocolate and has been made impure in a sense, in a parallel to the demons being angels plus sin or selfish desire or whatever
It's sinfully rich!
It's devilishly delicious!
I like the segment that reminds that (white = purity) is not strictly some anglo-european idea but exists in many cultures, including Africa and the Near East and south east asia which all have dark skin tones. Most of southeast Europe was olive-skinned anyway, and that's where most of the Christians resided
He literally says that.
I think it comes from our evolutionary fear of night time.
Yeah it's not a skin thing it's just black and white
@RossHouck yeah, that's why OP said they liked the segment where he said that
Usually people will take every opportunity to find something racist or as a reason to blame caucasians.
Angel's food cake makes sense as being white, light and fluffy. In the cultural context it was created in, those qualities would be associated with the divine. Therefore its opposite, which is dense, dark and moist, is the devil's food. I dont think its origin is explicitly racist, but it might have been influenced by such.
I figure the people making these cakes were probably just people messing around in the kitchen or maybe a restaurant context and thought it would be fun to call them as such. They weren't like head priests or anything right? It was probably just the cultural feeling at the time to call them angel or devils food because it kind of had that feeling to it. All these other influences may have had some effect of course, but I doubt they thought that hard about it if they were, it's just cake after all.
It's totally off the wall irrational grasping to claim that racism has anything to do with it without any evidence at all.
Yeah I think blaming racism is a big reach. I’ve always figured angels food because of the light and airy texture is angel or heaven like. Devils food was the opposite dense and thick.
Monkey food cake
@@markbollinger1343The entire point of things like "racist predispositions" is that they're unconscious - an implicit understanding of white=good in the context of the 1900s US definitely would have a racist component because those attitudes were thoroughly embedded in society at the time and influenced everything. That effect is much less pronounced today but still very much exists, and recognising that is an important part of stopping it (remember that the entire point is that it's unconscious and fairly subtle, it doesn't make you a member of the KKK if you recognise that unconscious bias exists)
Maybe because the chocolate cake was 'TEMPTING' and hard to resist, as dogma characterizes the "devil".
Sounds like a job for Max Miller!
He's actually already made a video about angel food cake! "Fannie Farmer and the Modern Recipe"
I’d love to see them film together!
@@PedroDuqueBR fr these two are the only food creators i follow i love their content
Going back to ancient times the underworld was considered to be a dark place because it was underground. Heaven was light because it was near the sun.
Finally somebody pointing out the whole sun and ground thing. I could totally make sense that if some of these made an angel food cake that's super light area and white and you make a super dense heavy chocolate thing you're going to name it the opposite. It didn't happen that long ago pretty sure people still damed things the same silly ironic way we do now.
@@darcieclements4880
so basically it's just:
Light Soft and Fluffy Up Above the Sky CLOUD ⬆️☁️
⬆️☁️ VS 🪨⬇️
Heavy Dense Down Below the Ground EARTH ⬇️🪨
Hey Adam. I don't know how often you check your comments, but I think an interesting topic for you to cover is one on food preservatives and potentially using them for home cooking. I was searching for a bottle of ranch the other day, and I found that none of the brands on the shelf had all of the following A) buttermilk based, B) No Added Sugar, C) Not Fat-Free. Those that are sugar free are also fat free, and even then, many of them were dairy free as well. Fats don't particularly scare me in food, and I'd rather get my sugars from foods that are truly meant to have them, and so had the thought of making my own ranch from scratch, but giving it the same industry preservatives to keep it shelf stable for months, as I don't particularly use a lot of dressing all at once. However, as I previously mentioned, a lot of the resources on the internet, or at least the resources that float to the top of the search, don't really explain how to work with them. They may explain what they are, or give out "natural alternatives," but there's very little on how we home cooks can take advantage of them. I thought with your affection for sodium citrate--another "industry chemical"--this could be a topic you would be interested in.
Readin old novels from the 19th century, the devil was the color black. The devil resided in hell, a place of a lot of fire and, if you have wood fireplace, it can be really sooty, it gets things black. Hell was very sooty so the devil was described as being black as oppose to red nowadays.
6:27 The shirt says Eggs&Sugar&Flour&Butt.
butt.
I'm childish. I saw this too and sniggered. 😂
Must be the devils recipe.
Don't know if you will read this but in Italy we have a "Torta Paradiso" ("paradise cake") which basically is the angel cake plus icing sugar on top. So yes, the whiteness may indeed recall the clouds. Paradise is basically just clouds and angels live there.
so basically it's just:
Light Soft and Fluffy Up Above the Sky CLOUD ⬆️☁️
⬆️☁️ VS 🪨⬇️
Heavy Dense Down Below the Ground EARTH ⬇️🪨
yeah, I don't think the Western Racist explanation is the main one. It's far more probable that Angel's Food is named such because it's very pale, lightly flavored, & fluffy; while Devil's Food is the opposite being Dense, darker, & strongly flavored
I think its pretty insane to even bring that up as an explanation. Just forcing this whole inherent American racism into places that show absolutely no evidence or reason for that to be the case
It could have played a role, but maybe a minor 1?
@@ancellery6430 yeah, i tried to not cause Adam of letting his Gringo-brain project racism into everything that's not racism.
But that's literally what it is, Adam let his Gringo brain project racism into something that isn't racist
@@Artista_Frustrado everyone else: mmm yummy food
leftoids: but skin colour!!!!!!
@@ancellery6430 Devil's food cake is of American origin though??? What do you mean "places that show absolutely no evidence or reason for that to be the case"? When did racism stop being a VERY significant cultural force in the late 1800s and early 1900s when these cakes appeared?
Racism encompasses much more than chattel slavery and separate-but-equal. Anything that significant to a culture is going to be diffused throughout all kinds of things. I mean, just think of the old Christian antipathy for left-handedness, that was far less important to the culture and it still gave us words like "sinister" and the homonymizing of "right" and "right. Slavery was the core economic system in the US South for centuries, white supremacist racism the ideology justifying its existence, the expansion of the United States into indigenous Native American lands, etc... you can't expect that not to have an effect on the culture.
I don't think the racist explanation holds much water, since there was already "Chocolate Angel's Food Cake" (same cake but brown because of the cocoa in it), it certainly has to do with it being denser, fattier and heavier.
He literally delegitimised his own argument with that slip up
@@nicky-bucketslol, his “argument” that there are a half dozen potential etymologies, all of them debatable and one of them involves racism
“He who dwells on racism is therefore racist, and/or catering to their race obsessed associates” Plato.
it's a contributor that spoils the fun.
best to not dwell too long or to dismiss it entirely.
@@gabbonoo I disagree, learning and curiosity can still be fun even if it's on serious topics, or adjacent to them.
I love your journey from basic recipe videos to food science to food history. And before all of that, videos about music
Eggs&
Sugar&
Flour&
Butter
yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
We've got cereal, bread and eggs
We've got bread and cheese and butter and eggs
We've got eggs or cereal and cheese
We've got bread and eggs or butter and eggs
We've got eggs and we also have a goat
0:27 If you want RUclips to think you're a bot. a great way of doing that is leaving a link to any website, so that's not going to happen
I’d heard that angels food cake was named as such because one early author described it as “so light and fluffy that an angel could eat it and still fly up to heaven”
"Sour milk" and "buttermilk" are not the same thing in recipes written before modern refrigeration. Buttermilk back then actually referred to the pallid liquid leftover from churning butter. Sour milk is what we today call buttermilk, which is regular un-churned milk inoculated with bacteria.
Thanks, I wondered what was up with that. I noticed that his buttermilk was really thick and not drained of its nutrition like I'm used to see with the liquid leftover from churning butter. Wikipedia's article on buttermilk also isn't very clear about this. It's using a lot of "originally" and "traditionally" and it's really confusing that it's just a completely different product now in the US, because round these parts we're still drinking "the old-fashioned product".
7:02 did you position your laptop in the exact spot that makes your shirt say "butt" XD
Maybe, but I honestly think allegations of racism is us overlaying our modern sensibilities on this. Not that there wasn't racism, but I don't think they would have bothered to express it so subtly. If anything, the racism and the concepts of angels vs. devils are both independently attached to the concept that white = good and black = bad, but correlation is not causation.
concepts of the "in group" and the "out group" predate religion. Concepts about the physical appearance of demons were based on the physical appearance of people from neighboring tribes that were considered enemies. The concept of angels and devils came from tribal loyalty - you convince yourself that your tribe are the angels that they're "better"/"higher" than the other tribe so that you can murder them without contradicting your morals. It just so happened that Judeo-Christianity had the largest population size and so white skin was considered "good".
It's the same concept in East Asia (in group vs out-group = colorism) but amplified by colonialism by white Europeans who needed to convince East Asians that they were "better" than darker asians so that they wouldn't revolt.
@@johnjungkook2721 Neighboring tribes do not have a different physical appearance without semi-modern travel.
@@johnjungkook2721 From where are you pulling this information, exactly? Is there archaeology on this subject? Historical literature?
@@johnjungkook2721 That's a load of horse-pucky. Jews and Christians started out brown and there are still many Jews and even Christians of Middle Eastern decent, not to mention there are very strong Christian presences in Africa and South America, as well. Even many slaves in North America became Christians because, if you actually read the Bible instead of listening to conservative Christian headcanon, God loves all his children equally. The only place where whiteness was considered to be angelic was among Christians of European decent, and even there, the number of them that believe that varies heavily by the era you're talking about.
In Asia, lighter skin color was thought to be "better" because, much like in medieval Europe, poor people had to work in the fields all day, which made them dark through tanning, while rich people's lifestyles had them indoors most of the time, which meant their untanned skin was lighter, making lighter skin better if you judge people by wealth. That thinking predated colonialism by centuries, if not millennia.
90 iq @@johnjungkook2721
On deviled foods: there's a class aspect there, too, potentially, I think? Getting pepper from south-east Asia to western Europe made it unimaginably expensive to all but the peak of the aristocracy until the colonial era and its ocean "trading" (violence? what violence?), so any heavily spiced food would have been associated with luxury, which is never far from decadence. The compounds that create the sensations that made the Spice Islands flora so valuable might have also been produced by local plants (I am not enough of a botanical historian, if such a thing exists, to do more than guess), but I can see the humour-balancing Medieval church taking a dim view. That said saffron used to grow in Essex, so I may be revealing other gaps in my knowledge.
It’s worth noting that Saffron is unusually cold hardy for a valuable spice. But it’s the exception, not the rule. So overall your point may stand.
@ I don’t dispute that; I was more driving at the idea that the only flavouring available to the peasantry was salt is facially ridiculous. Herbs, berries etc all native to the British isles, so the messes of postage would have tasted of something. I am not aware of any such that duplicates pepperiness though, and chillies wouldn’t have appeared until post Columbian exchange, so I stand by devilled as spicy decadence.
On a related note, having grown up with the Redwall books, I had a go at hotroot soup a few years back. I assumed the hotroot woukd be horseradish, as that grows here; I was a bit disappointed that my soup was cl,pletely lacking in fire. From which I learnt that whatever makes horseradish burn is deactivated by heat, and the otters had access to ginger. I guess mustard and horseradish could be added to the cheap local devising things on that score; watercress less so.
Great stuff, Adam! Keep up the irregular content
i could never wave around that cake in front of my face for several minutes like that without eating a little.
I always thought that the Devil's food was a reference to decadence in the chocolate.
Theologically, I've always been a fan of the passage in Good Omens where upon describing an army of angels staring down an army of fallen angels, they mention how an expert, if they looked really closely, might be able to tell which was which. :)
In cultural ideas of other colours being "good" that I know, white means death in some Asian cultures (worn at funerals), and white wedding dresses are an adoption of Western style, with at least traditional Japanese wedding kimonos being red, and I knwo even now that Indian wedding dresses are red (usually with a lot of gold embroidery). Black is an Ancient Egyptian colour of fertility, because of river soil being that colour.
Even white wedding dresses are a very recent idea. For a long time in the West they were traditionally blue (hence "something borrowed, something blue"). Then Queen Victoria or somebody got married in a white dress and everyone went nuts over the idea.
@stevethepocket Yeah, I have also heard that prior to the white trend, wedding dresses in America were often just normal dresses, just a brand new one fresh for the wedding which would then become their church best for a good deal of time afterwards.
How I always took the differences:
Devil's: very tempting and maybe not all that good for you. That much chocolate is not good for the glucose levels
Angel's: light and fluffy, like a cloud. Also, it doesn't taste like much so let's throw some fresh berries on there for flavor (and color), so it must be good for you
Not to be pedantic, but chocolate is fairly healthy. It’s usually just coco solids (protein) and coco butter (fat). Neither of them should be nearly as bad for glucose as plain white flour and sugar in the angels food cake. As such, the devils version is probably healthier. The reason most chocolate is bad is that it’s also quite bitter, so sugar is added. The same might be true for devils food cake, where proportionally more sugar is added to counteract the bitter chocolate. But usually I find deserts of chocolate variety actually have less total sugar than non-chocolate kinds.
or maybe just:
Light Soft and Fluffy Up Above the Sky CLOUD ⬆️☁️
⬆️☁️ VS 🪨⬇️
Heavy Dense Down Below the Ground EARTH ⬇️🪨
This is approaching Ann Reardon territory and I'm here for it.
I lean towards the theory that the angel food was thus called because it was light, fluffy, and cloud-like and then someone made Devil's food to be the opposite. But I think it probably also draws on a notion that goes back to heretical groups and even some orthodox groups in the early church (through the influence of second-century neo-platonic thought) that physical pleasure is evil. That idea is rooted in the neo-platonic idea that matter itself is evil while the soul is good. We should focus on the soul and escaping this material world rather than on satisfying bodily desires. Thus, rich foods that bring more pleasure have a certain level of guilt associated with them. But for what it is worth as a pastor, this idea is pretty flatly contradicted in Scripture. Song of Solomon celebrates physical sexual pleasure within the proper context. Ecclesiastes says that even though this world is broken and much we do is futile, we should enjoy the good things of creation. And at a broader level, the Bible does not end with everyone leaving the physical world and "going to heaven." It ends with Heaven coming down to the physical world. The Christian hope is not escaping creation, but being raised physically from the dead and enjoying creation healed from its brokenness. The Bible is very pro-physicality and pro-pleasure. Even the prohibitions on things like promiscuity and gluttony are to set pleasure in its proper place and thus maximize it, not stifle it.
Cheat days once a week feel better than eating like crap every day, and sex as an expression of monogamous love feels better than an impulsive college hook-up. IDK why more people don't realize this
Very good explanation. I always find it so weird that people associate Christianity with this anti-material sentiment when gnosticism was a heresy for a (many) reason. I was speaking with my priest about alcohol and what he said boiled down to moderation. If it makes you sin, then don't consume it, but the pleasure itself isn't bad. Psalm 104 even says "wine gladdens the heart of man" as a part of a psalm all about the wonderful creation God has made!
You think that in the course of naming the cake, people were influenced by the fact that Gnostics in the Late Antique and Heretics in the Medieval period believed that the sensory realm of pleasure was evil and subcreated by an evil god? It seems more likely that the much bigger influence in Western culture was the extremely common and orthodox belief that gluttony - all intemperate eating, usually "eating for pleasure alone" - is a sin, no? Gluttony defined roughly that way sat as one of the _big ones_ for over a thousand years, you could say nearly two, in the dominant Western cultural consciousness. While people often think like Gnostics in subtle ways they aren't aware of, and I get your theological point about pleasure in Christianity, it seems like the cake naming thing's pretty straightforward on this front.
@ I’m arguing that understanding gluttony as eating for pleasure is one of the subtle influences of Gnosticism. It was likely preserved through monastic asceticism where people thought that the more pleasure you rejected, the closer to God you were. Unfortunately, some of the most influential theologians in history (Augustine, Jerome, chrysostom, Thomas, etc.) were ascetics to one extent or another and so their influence still lingers even today.
Yeah, as a Catholic myself, I was a little disappointed with how Adam seemed to be subtly thumbing his nose at "those silly Abrahamic religions, thinking angels are in the clouds".
At least he didn't explicitly make fun of the faith, which is kinda nice.
Regarding asceticism, the Catholic idea behind it isn't quite the same as the Gnostic idea. It's not that the things you're abstaining from are bad - they're actually quite good in themselves. The problem is with us - our disordered wills often prefer lesser goods to greater goods. So, it can be helpful in the spiritual life to deprive yourself of those lesser earthly goods, to more freely and fully adhere to the greater spiritual goods. This is the reason we fast, and Jesus expected his disciples to fast regularly.
I'm impressed with the amount of primary sources being searched to attempt to figure out what was the earliest mention of Angel and Devil's food cake. Somethings we can plausibly speculate as we will never fully know.
I have a theory, newly formed. As you cut the Angel food cake, could it be that cross section looks similar to a wing. This really depends on the shape and style of cake pan. Anyway, not for nothing.
Oh that's a beautiful theory!
Thank you. I appreciate your presupposition that your listening (viewing) audience is somewhat intelligent and can readily understand your explanations and theories.
I think a lot of this race discussion is modern (current) discussion and ideas being plastered onto older terms and ideas.
If you look for issues, you will find them if you look hard enough.
Devils food cake is called devils food because it's rich and decadent. It's the opposite of angles food cake, which is light and airy. Period.
Gluttony is also a cardinal sin, so the richer cake would be seen as gluttonous compared to a plain sponge cake.
Adam is starting to get exhausting with his social/political reaching. I've stopped watching this guy actively.
the term came about in a period where racial tensions were a bigger discussion than they are now-the only modern ideas adam introduces is that those cultural keystones were wrong. it might not be the origin but i don’t think we can ignore the connections to whiteness as a symbol of purity, especially in 1900s america and especially if we’re running by the idea that it’s color which gives it its name. again, there is no direct etymology for the term. i’m not so sure that you saying “period” just closes the discussion on a topic with no bound origin.
for the record, i don’t subscribe to that theory. but i do think that he provides compelling enough proof to take the color of the cake into account, and in doing so, we can’t ignore the semiotics of color in that timeframe. it’s not like that’s the only presented theory. he says the same thing you do, man.
My Guy the early 1900s were the height of Jim Crow where an extreme amount of effort was put into explicitly racist legislation to ensure black people were completely unable to effectively participate in society.
purity with white or clear could be from flour manufacturing. The best tasting flour is paler and the lightest texture is the most free of chaff and hull.
5:58 in some parts of India, coconuts are called "shrifal" which means the fruit of Lakshmi or the divine/noble fruit, because of auspicious connections
My guess is that 'white' and 'thick chocolate' cake were seen as boring terms by the English speaking culinary community of the time so they saw it fit to give familiar and dramatic names to these recipes, the most ironic being 'angel food cake' seeing as to how cake is already more 'gluttonous' than bread, with devil's food cake being the more obvious extreme
dude, its a cake, chill
The aside on density was appreciated as it was my first thought when you made the joke
15:32 you say abrahamic religions here, but judaism does not have a concept of hell
Or the messiah that the Torah said would come.
For me I always took the density/lightness angle to be the primary differentiator. If it was purely about the color, then the idea of a "chocolate angel's food cake" as you show would be nonsensical. For me I always assumed that it was because angels' food was light and airy while devil's food was dense and rich, and probably also leaning a bit into the temptation/gluttony angle a bit for the latter.
That's quite a rant ya got goin', there, Adam.
These researched documentaries are what you do best! Really great.
Maybe a little of everything all at once. I don’t think too much thought ever goes into naming foods historically. It like, “yeah that sound good” and a few subconscious associations.
I never liked angels food cake because it had a cottony texture, like cotton candy which I also don’t like. Devil’’ food cake on the other hand, I would eat an entire cake if given the opportunity.
Always thankful for your posts Adam. Our interests seem to overlap in many ways. Keep up the good work.
Not directly relevant but I'd like to point out that the genus name for the cacao plant is "Theobroma"--Greek for "food of the gods"
Fascinating video. I believe that the increased acidity in the angel food cake recipe is to stabilize the meringue, not lighten the color or to leaven the cake. The browning that takes place due to higher pH is only really seen on the exterior of the cake, where, if anything, angel food cakes are usually darker than sponge cakes. Also, while egg whites are slightly alkaline, angel food cakes generally do not need a leavening agent, as there is already air contained in a thick network of egg protein. I'm sure you are aware of all of this, but your phrasing made it a bit misleading.
Soured milk is not the same as butter milk! It is actually a fermented milk!
Alternative explanation for the “Angel” part of the name - with the lack of egg yolks or butter it’s a very low-fat cake, so you’re being “good” by eating it, good like an angel. Nowadays with what we know about sugar the sugar content might cause someone to choose a different name, but it’s too late, the name has stuck. I have no evidence for that, just a hypothesis.
Now, I know nothing of etymology, but my guess is that angel food cake was called that due to how it's not really too indulgent, light and airy, a bit like a cloud, things such as that, whilst devil food cake is dense, indulgent, all that jazz.
He comments on that, that was in the video. You just worded it differently.
We also can’t forget how influential religion was in the US after the Second Great Awakening and all the religious groups that had a thing with bland food. We focus on the Puritans around Thanksgiving and the founding of Massachusetts, but we also forget how they had their hand in basically every positive social movement that formed in the US from the 1820s until the 1920s. It wasn’t just Kellogg and eating bland food, the Puritans had their hand in the Abolition Movement, the first 2 waves of Feminism and Evangelical Christianity. As much as you like to point out racism, it’s not the only thing that’s happened in American history for better or worse. The Puritans were very involved in American history and have a lot of impacts we still see today. History is rarely as simple as one phenomena having complete run of a society. Also, the first Fannie Farmer cookbook was published in the late 1800s in Boston. Which was the first modern cookbook with modern measurements. So, you can’t just ignore the fact that the Puritan Heartland had a massive impact in the most basic parts of cooking in the US, how we write recipes.
markiplier's clone desperately tries to explain how these baked goods aren't racist
Does gluttony only apply to food.. or does it also apply to people who take more than their fair share of other resources..
I would say it applies to both.
We always made an angel’s food cake with left over egg whites, after we made a fairy food cake which called for all egg yolks. Never considered those in conjunction with a devil’s food cake … we just loved cake! TFS.
" Death By Chocolate" a chocolate cake sold by Kroger grocery stores a few years ago. A "devils food " cake.Very good after a smoke session.
One other thing to consider, doesn't necessarily denote anything in particular but is still an interesting coincidence, is that fact that we also have "Lava Cakes" where the lava in said cake is just hot fudge. Could further solidify how people saw the dark chocolate cakes as coming from the fiery pits of hell... or it could just be an evolution of the devil cake playing further into the whole thing for fun.
Angel food cake is so easy to just but pre-made at the store that I've never considered bothering to make it from scratch. But the concept of a chocolate angel food cake has me just intrigued enough to copy that recipe down and file it away for possible future use.
Another point for why white was, and is, considered pure. Metals which are full of impurities become darker, so it was a mark of quality. If you're iron pot was of a darker color than someone elses, you'd know that it had more impurities in it. Same goes for obsidian, the reason for it's color is because of all of the impurities it has. Pretty mcuh any Christian people in the world has the black = bad, white = good. But not always. Orthodox Christian clergy and monks wear black because it also symbolizes repentance. It's contextual. We don't actually think colors are evil, it's just symbolism. God made colors, so colors aren't evil.
Also, you got a lot of the theology wrong, but I won't fault you cause I assume you aren't Christian.
I couldn't read through all the comments but the one word I didn't hear Adam say was "red."
At least in modern recipes, Devils' food cake often has buttermilk, cocoa, and baking soda, with the reaction producing a redder cake. A chocolate cake often has melted chocolate.
I don't know why but that intro was so fun love it
Always liked "death by chocolate cake" more as a name, felt like it more accurately described my experience eating the cake
It's angel food cake because you gotta beat the hell out of those egg whites.
My guy, are you putting mayo in your Ambrosia? Do people do that? My family has always used whipped cream of some sort, with sweat soaked mandarin sliced, maraschino cherries, pineapples chunks, walnuts and mini marshmallows.
Yeah, it sounds gross with mayo
adam, ambrosia is made with WHIPPED CREAM/TOPPING. NOT MAYO????
Less dense... But takes up more space... Alright so it makes you fluffier :)
i think the most devilish thing about this whole video is that you were holding two slices of delicious cake and didnt record a single recipe 😭
I always heard the reason was that angel food cake is so light angels could eat it and still fly, while devil’s food was so heavy it’d weigh you down.
my dad, born in 1930, said (when he was alive) that "devil's food" (cake, eggs, etc) was bc it tasted so good/decadent ... and that "angel's food cake" was bc it tasted of nothing tempting.
Food history and "we don't have a definitive answer"? I am shocked! :P
Angel Food Cake is such a staple of my childhood. It was always made for my dad's birthday, filled with cherries and smothered in cool-whip. It was so fluffy 85lb preteen me would eat a whole cake
I have my heart set on making an angel's food cheesecake.
I think that's basically what Japanese cheesecake is. At least at one of my local sushi joints after a meal they'll give you a slice of fluffy cheesecake that is similar to Angel's food cake.
Angel cake, you can add lots of items and it will absorb quite well, but I'm devil food cake all day.
Fun fact: In Germany, we only have one word for heaven and sky: "Himmel"
Fyi, I am pushing 60 years old and I have never heard angel food cake with the apostrophe attached. Devil's food cake almost always with the S though the apostrophe is a 50/50 proposition.
Well, here's a question... Why do we bake angel food cake in bundt cake molds? Why does it always have a hole in the center?
I would assume the increased side surface area allows the egg white batter to cling to them and rise more, resulting in a more even and light crumb than a typical round or square pan, where the batter will sag and sink in the center
@@scoobertdoobert7893 Absolutely! The walls are steep and give the cake plenty of room to rise. Of course, the cake must also be cooled upside down in the pan to maintain hight and texture. Bundt pans are ideal for this! You can absolutely make angel food cakes in any pan, but it's much easier to get the right texture with a bundt.
@ Ah the inverted pan technique. Ive seen it done for panettone but that makes sense for any light baked good. Good thinking
I like how different languages created words based on similar concepts but came up with different words for them. French has blanc which is white- blank. Some people might describe blank to mean a black void, others might say a foggy white environment. And looking at Old English, their word blac meant more what we describe white to be. Super cool etymology stuff
Like a loooot of words in europe that's just copy of latin "blancus", thanks Roman Empire.
What a rollercoaster of a video
4:33 Adam, notion of bread of angels goes back to the times of the New Testament. The idea of 'Bread of Heaven', that being the Manna of Moses, was considered by many Jewish groups to be the food of Angels given to man, as given witness by the Talmud (according to Brant Pitre). Early Christian writers drew from this when referencing the Lord's Supper, calling it the Bread of Angels, for they believed it to be the Real Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It was common theme in hymography, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas's 'Sacris Solemniis'. It was overall a common food Etymology that was quite literal, only reducing to metaphor by the turn of the 16th Century.
Fluffy cloud cake vs. Super choc cake.
Choc as in short for chocolate of course, but also sounding like "shock" as in the shock devouring such a delight can give you.
Adam, I recognize that very page and both of recipes in that book you have. I used to own that exact same book and, lost it about 25 years ago during a move. Please, what's the name of that book? I'd like to try and find a copy of it again.
An excerpt from "Jesus and the Disinherited" by Howard Thurman in 1949: "Religion is thus made a defender and guarantor
of the presumptions. God, for all practical purposes, is imaged as an elderly, benign white man, seated on a white
throne, with bright, white light emanating from his countenance. Angels are blonds and brunets suspended in the
air around his throne to be his messengers and execute his purposes. Satan is viewed as being red with the glow of fire. But the imps, the messengers of the devil, are black. The
phrase “black as an imp” is a stereotype."
Loved this on so many levels. Also, the "devilled" etymology reminded me of the reasoning behind Mr Kellogg's invention of Corn Flakes, as pointed out in your respective video/s.
I would be interested in the history and etymology of the South African angel's food, if you think of making a video on it.
15:34 and Purgatory things with "too slow"?
Can you please do a video on research around the safety of distilled water and the efficacy of remineralizing it?
Adam, the angel food cake is light and fluffy, like a cloud. Right? This baker has been making them for years, and popular with those looking for a lighter dessert. Right? Great topped with berries and whipped cream. Right? The similar cake you mentioned Sunshine cake is a chiffon. Similarly light but egg yolk bakes a richer sponge cake.
Ive been watching and loving your videos for a long time now and I'm kinda sad abou you moving away from RUclips cause you were a content creator that for some reason matched my hobbies and interests (I'm a professional and passionate cook, former powerlifter, bodybuilding enthusiast and a metalhead 😂) anyway I just wanted to say thank you for all the information forward videos you have made to further educate even people like me who cooks for hundreds of people daily.
I always interpreted the name "angelfood cake" as "angels are soft and fragile creatures, who'll subsist on food as airy and ephemeral as a cake that is mildly sweet, mildly lemony, and very very light"
I then interpreted "devilfood cake" as "well we took the concept of angelfood cake and flipped it on its head"- heavy, rich, bold-flavored...
Anyone know why the name at the top of the poem at 9:23 has asterisks in it? I went to look it up and many other names are similar asterisks in them.
6:19 reminds me of that scene in Django with Leonardo Di Caprio... When Candie fininshes his "negotiations" with Django and Schultz he very particularly says they will be serving "Hwite Cake"
Hey Adam, did you know bananas hold better in the fridge?
The peels will turn and go dark, yet the inside will be perfectly ripe and take much longer to go bad!
I saw your bananas on the counter, and thought you might find the reason they don’t brown fast in the fridge interesting!