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.
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?!"
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
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
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 ‘angle 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
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 .
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
have you ever considered making home oven pizza while leaving the oven door open? I've noticed that almost all pizza ovens have the air open to the environment, where as home ovens have it almost entirely sealed. My theory is that the build up of moisture in the air of a home oven leads to inhibited browning. In compassion the water vapor in a pizza oven could easily escape and get out of the way. Would be super interested to see what happens!
Its because angel food cake is light and fluffy and devils food cake is dark and rich and people always go "oh im gonna be naughty and have this rich chocolate cake"
Adam hitting the "eat me" note faintly like Pete Townshend hitting "squeeze me". With that in mind: C'mon and eat meeee C'mon and eat meeee C'mon and eat me like you do I'm just so bad for you Mama's got a sweet cake, Daddy never sleeps at night
I am told that the Scandinavians still use ammonium carbonate as a leavening agent for cookies. Apparently said cookies smell like urine while they’re baking. Yum.
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.
I wonder how the fact that chocolate was a much newer discovery impacted the term. There's probably something to be said about it's newness compared to angles food. especially when you consider that the only ones who had chocolate for a long time were the rich in england. if theres any trail there it could be another way that america wanted to seperate it's self from the rest of the world.
@@jasonslade6259Well yeah but we also associate red with hell. I associate hell with the color red way more than I do black. As a couple people point out, black isn't even that unholy of a color in a lot of contexts. Alotta priests wear black. Nuns wear black.
I tried looking it up but there seems to be no true conclusion; My guesses are as to why it isn't red is as follows; 1). Depictions of the devil being color red is pretty recent. Early depictions of the devil/satan were either a monstrous amalgam of multiple animal parts (Baphomet) or an angel-like figure emphasizing lucifer's heavenly origins. 2). Red wasn't a popular color of food. Tomatoes were considered poisonous and the most common "red" colored food is blood, which the consumption of is banned in abrahamic religions. 3). Mass production of red food coloring is recent.
"... why isn't devil's food cake red..." Well, the opposite of light is dark and heavy-- the Prince of Darkness is never called the the Prince of Red. Literalness is never worth it in such things. There is a whole lot that can be said about the meanings of devils, demons, satan, cherubim, angels, seraphim and such.
As a millennial I've always associated these with 80/90s diet culture where fat = bad. Of course, given the age of these terms, that wouldn't make sense but I clearly remember Devils Food Cake having it's thing in that period with brands like Snackwells kind of marketing themselves as "healthy" devils food cake. But it also makes sense, as angels food is virtually fat free and therefore healthy under that paradigm, while devils food has a lot more fat from the egg yolks and chocolate and is therefore bad or devilish.
So i haven’t watched the video yet, but this is what i always assumed. Angel’s food cake came first. It’s light, airy, and soft like an angel. Then someone came up with Devil’s food cake as the opposite to play off of the popularity of Angel’s food 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.
yeah i don't think the Western Racist explanation is the main one, but is probably that Angel's Food is very pale, light, & fluffy; while Devil's Food is the opposite being Dense, darker, & strongly flavored
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.
He's just dedicated to his content and not afraid to be himself on (most) things, don't assume things about any developmental disorders and/or personal problems you völlig falscher individual!!!
I always got so confused as a brit reading american books when the characters would mention devil's food cake. I didn't know angel/devils food was until I watched the video where safiya and tyler made their wedding cake
Idk Mr Ragusea, I think the racism cake angle might be a bit of a stretch. Angel= light and fluffy->make a rich and heavy cake that’s like the nega-version of angel food cake->name it after the opposite of angel. That seems much more likely than late 1800s bakers trying to subtly dunk on black people. Who I guess are supposed to feel like, despair upon eating the delicious angel food cake and be like “alas! I am too dark of skin to be like this fluffy and delicious cake, and by extension a part of the Kingdom of God. I am more akin to this (also delicious) cake, named after…the great deceiver! Damn it all! Big fan of the channel though!! Love the food-science-history-sociology variety show videos!
@ yeah I did watch the video, I just feel that after watching, he was a little too charitable to the “racism as origin to naming of angel food cake” theory. I don’t think he tries to push it as the most likely origin, but I think he should’ve been like “that’s a little far-fetched”.
@@plantain.1739ope, just rewatched the second half of the video, and yeah he definitely gives the last word to “light fluffy vs rich dark” theory. My bad, it’s a sleepy afternoon. I think I just got hung up on 13:40 where Adam hits us with the “could be that, or maybe it’s just racism”. Adam may have meant that sarcastically and I just misunderstood. As a wise man once said, whoopsie daisies.
Yeah, Adam is really into the self flagellating behavior. Not the first video where he's pulling this. He was a university professor if I'm not mistaken, and this is part of the necessary brainrot to be a professor in the US.
I believe you are mistaken about butter milk. They would have literally meant sour milk. Buttermilk back then was not fermented, it was the actual remnants from making butter, a watery whey skim milk. Fermented buttermilk is a more modern thing.
Great video. Interesting and well done. On the theme of racism in food history, how about MSG? Sorry if you’ve already covered it. I have a sieve for a brain Love the shirt, too
Its just so funny to me how food culture often aligns with Abrahamic Judeo-Christian culture and you an atheist have to explain the origin of these traditions to a largely Secular audience.
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.
5:50 Wait, isn't ambrosia typically made with cool whip? I know it's barely a whilped cream, but I'd argue it's a far cry from mayo in almost every respect
Wikipedia: "Ambrosia can also include mayonnaise or dairy ingredients: whipped cream (or whipped topping), sour cream, cream cheese, pudding, yogurt, or cottage cheese."
South African here. I’ve never heard of angel food, other than the cake. I tried a quick and dirty Google search and found nothing. Anyone have any further details about the fruit salad thing Adam is referring to?
Adam, im very impressed that you filmed an 17+ minute video and more with different camera shots without taking a bite of either cakes…
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.
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?!"
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?
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.
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 ‘angle 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
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 .
Eggs&
Sugar&
Flour&
Butter
yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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.
Sounds like a job for Max Miller!
He's actually already made a video about angel food cake! "Fannie Farmer and the Modern Recipe"
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Conversely, in some Asian cultures, white is the color of mourning. Chinese funerals with white limos as an example.
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!
6:27 The shirt says Eggs&Sugar&Flour&Butt.
butt.
This is approaching Ann Reardon territory and I'm here for it.
Always thankful for your posts Adam. Our interests seem to overlap in many ways. Keep up the good work.
Great stuff, Adam! Keep up the irregular content
What a rollercoaster of a video
Angels are most often depicted in bright white robes... that's probably the reason for the name
i know there are at least some depictions of lucifer having (or presumably gaining) black wings, as he is a fallen angel.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Angel cake, you can add lots of items and it will absorb quite well, but I'm devil food cake all day.
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.
Adam tries to go 5 minutes without white guilt challenge (impossible)
He admits to being a virtue signaler but continues to do it anyway.
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.
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.
have you ever considered making home oven pizza while leaving the oven door open? I've noticed that almost all pizza ovens have the air open to the environment, where as home ovens have it almost entirely sealed. My theory is that the build up of moisture in the air of a home oven leads to inhibited browning. In compassion the water vapor in a pizza oven could easily escape and get out of the way. Would be super interested to see what happens!
Its because angel food cake is light and fluffy and devils food cake is dark and rich and people always go "oh im gonna be naughty and have this rich chocolate cake"
Always liked "death by chocolate cake" more as a name, felt like it more accurately described my experience eating the cake
Adam hitting the "eat me" note faintly like Pete Townshend hitting "squeeze me".
With that in mind:
C'mon and eat meeee
C'mon and eat meeee
C'mon and eat me like you do
I'm just so bad for you
Mama's got a sweet cake, Daddy never sleeps at night
8:12 *And those of us who were already here and taking up space they wanted. 👍🏽
I don't know why but that intro was so fun love it
7:02 did you position your laptop in the exact spot that makes your shirt say "butt" XD
That is a beautiful slice of chocolate cake
etymology is always interesting
I am told that the Scandinavians still use ammonium carbonate as a leavening agent for cookies. Apparently said cookies smell like urine while they’re baking. Yum.
I always thought the difference was more about the density. Devil’s Cake is dark and heavy and dense. Angel’s food cake is light and fluffy and airy.
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.
This feels like an episode of tasting history
Using a font called Anton for your Deviled Cake website for your Halloween video. Nice.
now thats a delicious thumbnail
I wonder how the fact that chocolate was a much newer discovery impacted the term. There's probably something to be said about it's newness compared to angles food. especially when you consider that the only ones who had chocolate for a long time were the rich in england. if theres any trail there it could be another way that america wanted to seperate it's self from the rest of the world.
I certainly couldn't complain about some chocolate angel's cake... wait, what were we talking about again?
We should ask etymologynerd about why angel/devil food cake has the word food and cake there
Eggs&
Sugar&
Flour&
ButtLAPTOP SCREEN
achk!
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.
Soured milk is not the same as butter milk! It is actually a fermented milk!
Very serious question here, which will also sound wonderfully snarky: So if the etymology here is all about color, why isn’t a devil’s food cake red?
Probably because black/brown is considered the opposite of white and remember the angel cake came first.
@@jasonslade6259Well yeah but we also associate red with hell. I associate hell with the color red way more than I do black. As a couple people point out, black isn't even that unholy of a color in a lot of contexts. Alotta priests wear black. Nuns wear black.
I tried looking it up but there seems to be no true conclusion; My guesses are as to why it isn't red is as follows;
1). Depictions of the devil being color red is pretty recent. Early depictions of the devil/satan were either a monstrous amalgam of multiple animal parts (Baphomet) or an angel-like figure emphasizing lucifer's heavenly origins.
2). Red wasn't a popular color of food. Tomatoes were considered poisonous and the most common "red" colored food is blood, which the consumption of is banned in abrahamic religions.
3). Mass production of red food coloring is recent.
"... why isn't devil's food cake red..." Well, the opposite of light is dark and heavy-- the Prince of Darkness is never called the the Prince of Red. Literalness is never worth it in such things. There is a whole lot that can be said about the meanings of devils, demons, satan, cherubim, angels, seraphim and such.
As a south african I was surprised by that revelation. 6:00
As a millennial I've always associated these with 80/90s diet culture where fat = bad. Of course, given the age of these terms, that wouldn't make sense but I clearly remember Devils Food Cake having it's thing in that period with brands like Snackwells kind of marketing themselves as "healthy" devils food cake. But it also makes sense, as angels food is virtually fat free and therefore healthy under that paradigm, while devils food has a lot more fat from the egg yolks and chocolate and is therefore bad or devilish.
So i haven’t watched the video yet, but this is what i always assumed.
Angel’s food cake came first. It’s light, airy, and soft like an angel. Then someone came up with Devil’s food cake as the opposite to play off of the popularity of Angel’s food cake.
you see, it's because the devil's cake is actually nice
Thanks for this.
Freeze both cakes, put them thru a bread slicer and enjoy.
An example of the racial undertones of the perceptions of these cakes is in the 1935 Silly Symphony "Cookie Carnival"
The one thing in learning more and more. The more ignorant someone is, the more certain they are. Also, ignorance is bliss.
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.
yeah i don't think the Western Racist explanation is the main one, but is probably that Angel's Food is very pale, light, & fluffy; while Devil's Food is the opposite being Dense, darker, & strongly flavored
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 love how insanely acoustic you are bro
He's just dedicated to his content and not afraid to be himself on (most) things, don't assume things about any developmental disorders and/or personal problems you völlig falscher individual!!!
Say the word
@@vynce_p fr
I always got so confused as a brit reading american books when the characters would mention devil's food cake. I didn't know angel/devils food was until I watched the video where safiya and tyler made their wedding cake
Having intrusive thoughts about Devilled Egg Cake
Idk Mr Ragusea, I think the racism cake angle might be a bit of a stretch.
Angel= light and fluffy->make a rich and heavy cake that’s like the nega-version of angel food cake->name it after the opposite of angel.
That seems much more likely than late 1800s bakers trying to subtly dunk on black people. Who I guess are supposed to feel like, despair upon eating the delicious angel food cake and be like “alas! I am too dark of skin to be like this fluffy and delicious cake, and by extension a part of the Kingdom of God. I am more akin to this (also delicious) cake, named after…the great deceiver! Damn it all!
Big fan of the channel though!!
Love the food-science-history-sociology variety show videos!
Watch the damn video, man. He literally says that.
@ yeah I did watch the video, I just feel that after watching, he was a little too charitable to the “racism as origin to naming of angel food cake” theory. I don’t think he tries to push it as the most likely origin, but I think he should’ve been like “that’s a little far-fetched”.
@@plantain.1739ope, just rewatched the second half of the video, and yeah he definitely gives the last word to “light fluffy vs rich dark” theory. My bad, it’s a sleepy afternoon. I think I just got hung up on 13:40 where Adam hits us with the “could be that, or maybe it’s just racism”. Adam may have meant that sarcastically and I just misunderstood.
As a wise man once said, whoopsie daisies.
Yeah, Adam is really into the self flagellating behavior. Not the first video where he's pulling this. He was a university professor if I'm not mistaken, and this is part of the necessary brainrot to be a professor in the US.
@@shuppagail He was also a journalist, they most white-guilting of professions.
awesome shirt, man!
Perhaps this is an instance where we invoke the "language evolves" mantra, and ignore the potentially ugly history.
I believe you are mistaken about butter milk. They would have literally meant sour milk. Buttermilk back then was not fermented, it was the actual remnants from making butter, a watery whey skim milk. Fermented buttermilk is a more modern thing.
Never had ambrosia salad with mayo before.
Great video. Interesting and well done. On the theme of racism in food history, how about MSG?
Sorry if you’ve already covered it. I have a sieve for a brain
Love the shirt, too
He has, it’s called something like “MSG is neither dangerous nor perfectly fine”
This video is sponsored by... S Q U A R E S P A C E! Oh wait, Uh, Magic Spoon Cereal...
Huh, I’ve never heard someone stress the end of “SquareSpace” instead of the beginning
yum i havent had a slice in years. am due to enjoy some.. oh a tiny bit of vanilla ice cream too.
*Us Brits* have a canned custard called ambrosia 😅
The Muhammadi Ali clip comes to mind
1:25 “angel’s food cake” is much less common than “angel food cake”
Angel food cake is okay, but usually not even comparable to a juicy chocolate cake
Zoroastrianism is the religion about evil things being heavy and good things being light. It's not Abrahamic. Nice work, Ragu Sea
Love the shirt!
I will never eat another chocolate pastry or dessert ever again!
Or maybe start eating more... I'm not quite sure which way it goes.
Because racism that’s why.
Everything is racist!!!!!!!’ Aaaarrrrrg
Its just so funny to me how food culture often aligns with Abrahamic Judeo-Christian culture and you an atheist have to explain the origin of these traditions to a largely Secular audience.
Ragusea: "Why it's called devil's/angel's food cake"
Adam and Eve:
Thanks DAdam!
9:22 Can we discuss the implied attempt at rhyming "food" with "blood"? (for give my poetic ineptitude, but that seems to be the scheme)
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.
5:50 Wait, isn't ambrosia typically made with cool whip?
I know it's barely a whilped cream, but I'd argue it's a far cry from mayo in almost every respect
Wikipedia: "Ambrosia can also include mayonnaise or dairy ingredients: whipped cream (or whipped topping), sour cream, cream cheese, pudding, yogurt, or cottage cheese."
Gordon Ramsey and Simon Cowell are God!
but devil's food cake is so much tastier
Adam while eating a piece of yellow cake with salted caramel, "Why is it called Piss Food Cake?"
You just described the bible
Adam Raguesea core 0:08
I never liked how Angel's Food feel on my teeth.
Love etymology!
South African here. I’ve never heard of angel food, other than the cake. I tried a quick and dirty Google search and found nothing. Anyone have any further details about the fruit salad thing Adam is referring to?
Apparently Ambrosia skewers are marinated fresh fruit skewers cooked over coals. Not Angel but maybe some association…