Sweet Meals

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

sweet meals, occasions when the majority of the dishes are sweet, are highly culture specific, both in terms of the time of day when they are eaten and the foods served. Some are little more than snacks, while others are full-blown meals. Americans will happily make a meal of Cocoa Puffs cereal or French toast early in the day, but a sweet supper is considered peculiar. To most East Asians, a sugary repast isn’t a meal at all, an attitude they share with the French. An Austrian, on the other hand, wouldn’t think it odd to indulge in a slice of Gugelhupf for breakfast, a main dish of fruit dumplings for lunch, or pancakes for dinner (although probably not all in the same day). See gugelhupf and pancakes.