Sweet Decadence

About the Book

To celebrate her husband’s Central-European (“Mittel Europe”) heritage, Kati Urszenyi has compiled some of her family’s favorite sweet recipes into one sweet book. It is called Sweet Decadence: Memories of an era when sweets were sweet and is a collection of rich sophisticated desserts handed down to Kati through her husband’s family. These recipes have been written down in Gabor’s family for four generations. Presented with a double focus, on a vanished past and what we can do with it now, this is much more than a collection of recipes from was then and what now Authentic, delicious and doable.

Translated across time and space, this collection of a family's recipes helps us understand why the Austro-Hungarian Empire found its culinary apotheosis in desserts — pastries, cakes, squares, slices, and cookies — of incomparable excellence. Made with readily available and all-natural ingredients, these recipes can now be prepared with our modern equipment, with less effort but no loss of texture and flavor. The author brings us a deeply felt, living, dense memory of how life was lived in the Old Country then, back a few generations, and also gives us some glimpses of how these have survived in her kitchen in Canada and her family's festivities, by way of these recipes and all they represent of a shared social history. And they're just plain exciting and simple, direct, and make any occasion: a holiday, special event or an everyday meal, a big party or an intimate afternoon tea, kids' after-school snacks or your own private pick-me-up.

Spend some time with the author/translator's voice and the memories she shares and you'll feel like you've made some new friends, as well as learned how to bake something old that's as fresh as tomorrow -- with very little processed white flour or chemical liveners. She has also converted the recipes from the European Metric to US measurements.

In the 19th century, no other means existed to obtain good quality, good tasting preserves and nuts except for home preparation and storage. In summertime, housewives preserved fruits into jams and jellies, and collected nuts, storing them in the cold cellar or attic.

As a hobby, the ancestors of the Urszenyi family had an apiary on the estate. The honey was collected and kept in storage year round to use in baking fantastic honey creations. For dairy and meat products, they had cattle, chickens for meat and eggs, and pigs, ducks and geese for meat. In the 19th century they produced all their home supply of food and used it liberally in their baking.

The first three chapters outline the ingredients, techniques, and utensils, to help the cook prepare for this unique experience. The following chapters focus on different categories of dessert: for instance, cookies, tortas, and so on.

The chapters begin with a brief and humorous anecdote of life in the nineteenth century. Then the ingredients are given which are followed by concise and simple instructions to create the dessert.

The Way It Was Then

One after the other, the fancy horse-drawn carriages pulled up the drive of the centuries-old manor house. Surrounded by acres on acres of beautiful farmland, the rambling house was backed by a vegetable garden and a pen for the poultry and pigs. A large stable for the teams of carriage and five riding horses closed off the yard, while a second, even larger stable gave shelter to a small herd of dairy cows and draft horses. The driveway lovingly embraced a well-tended flower garden, already in bloom. On one side of the road leading up to the main house, fruit trees readied themselves for the summer. A gentle wind played with the white and rose-colored petals that had fallen from the trees on this glorious spring day — graduation day for the daughter of the family that lived here. Erzsébet had received her d