Comment Re:Also interesting ... (Score 1) 154
We eat desert at the end of the meal because long, long ago we found that when you were full, you could still eat something sweet. It was a way to cram in more calories so we could go longer without eating, work longer, shiver more, etc. Think northern European middle-ages.
This is not matched by culinary history. Sweet dessert at the end of the meal only came about in the mid/late 1700s in Europe as a result of changing ideas about diet. Interestingly, salads with oil/vinegar dressings also became common at this time
Sweetening things also became a lot easier around this point in history due to expanding trade and cultivation of sugar cane.
Middle Ages diet (for the rich, who had the choice) involved sweetening all kinds of things and overcooking almost everything as it was thought that cooking and digesting were related processes and that more cooking would make food less work to digest. So for example honeyed chicken porridge would have been a dish fit for a king!
None of that detracts from the rest of your post though