Dessert

I admit it: my favorite dessert is a bowl of cereal with a few teaspoons of ice cream added to the milk. Specifically, I like Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds and Breyers natural Vanilla ice cream. (Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!) Granted, this is hardly the stuff of cookbooks, but cereal-with-ice-cream does reflect our broader philosophy of cooking: adding a complementary texture, an accent flavor, or a new technique is all it takes to elevate a dish.

In savory food, we all know that it makes sense to put a slice of cheese on a burger because we’ve been socialized. It’s called a cheeseburger. Of course, there’s something complementary about the flavors, too, but for some reason, unless you’re at a Michelin-starred restaurant, dessert experimentation runs pretty close to the straight and narrow. For example, not very many people throw triple-crème cheese on their brownies—perhaps also because they’ve been socialized. It’s called common decency.