Angels

Dear OP,

If you ever post again please try to break your muddle of nonsense into readable paragraphs.

That headache inducing blob of type that was completely unreadable.

Congratulations to all of you that got through it all

ETA: salutations

Yep. As an unforgettable poster once said (I forgot who), “Paragraphs are your friend” :slight_smile:

Perhaps, but the intended target was angel-guy Sera’naphsus. I fully expected him to point out that I had as many words spelled wrongly as he, but within much less content.

At that point, I could concede the point, such as it would be, but point out that

I’M NO ANGEL!**

Perhaps we may discuss Comparative Cellphones sometimes?


TBJ

Dang, for a superior race, they really rub it in.

MacIan screamed. “Ah!” he cried. “Now I know who you really are. You are not God. You are not one of God’s angels. But you were once.”
– G. K. Chesterton: The Ball and the Cross

Please do not eat the urinal cakes.

Maybe angel-food cake* was imagined to be the food of the angels (plural, generic) while Devil’s-food cake is imagined to be the food of the Devil (singular, specific). Sort of like how “dog food” (no apostrophe) becomes “the dog’s food” once you give it to a specific dog.

*Notice how judicious use of hyphens eliminates that whole “food cake” awkwardness?

The origin of “Devil’s Food” is mixed up with “deviled,” connotating spicy.

Uh, cite?

When describing a devil’s-food cake, “spicy” is not a word that comes to mind. “Tempting” or “sinfully delicious,” perhaps. The most likely explanation is that the name was influenced by “angel food.”

Here’s a link:

And here’s a Staff Report:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdeviledeggs.html

“Mixed up with deviled”–doesn’t mean that a whole buncha related ideas including sinful/red/non-angel weren’t on people’s minds when it got its name. :slight_smile:

Oh Dear, looks like L’il Ed’s been into the sloe gin again.

Wikipedia is of the opinion that the historic sequence of names was:[ul]
[li]“Angel cake”[/li][li]“Devil’s food cake”[/li][li]“Angel food cake”.[/li][/ul]

That’s because it was originally “Angel’s Food Cake.” From the 1870’s.

My wife used to work for a Seraph in one of her regular series of dreams. Maybe you know him: Mort Coil, of The Mort Coil Show on the Hereafter’s TV network. For a while she was an intern but she got promoted to booking guests, both living and dead. Unless the potential guest is/was completely insane or an insatiable publicity hound they usually won’t appear, at least not a second time, because Mort is an abusive and jerkish column of fire.

St. Catherine of Siena runs the station and, lemme tell ya, another 600 years of austerities and not bathing haven’t helped her personality or smell.

Cooking historians seem to be under the impression it went from “angel cake” to “angel food,” with nary a mention of “angel’s food.”

Wikipedia is a good starting point for researching almost any topic, but it’s just plain wrong about a lot of things. “Angel food” has been around at least since the end of the 19th century. “Devil’s food” seems to be a 20th-century invention.

Well, research into words, even cooking terms, is a state of the art business. I can find a mention of “Angel’s Food Cake” in 1878 in the Alton, IL. newspaper. I can find articles in the same paper, from 1879-1881 calling it “Angel Food Cake.” I can find fewer articles in the same period, but in more newspapers in more locations calling it “Angel Cake.” So, the terms were all there in and about the same time period. I won’t disagree that it probably was known to more people as “Angel Cake” in that time frame.

. Wikipedia is certainly as you describe it–a good starting point.
While Wiki found Devil’s Food Cake from 1902, I can find it from 1893 in newspapers. So, for sure, it came way later than Angels.

Interesting and enlightening. At least I was right about Wikipedia being wrong.

(That’s one thing I love about this message board. No matter how a thread starts out it can end up fighting ignorance in all kinds of unexpected ways.)

If the first known appearance of the one is 1896, and the first known appearance of the other is 1902, I should say it’s unsafe to be absolute about the priority either way.

Well, he can’t catch the fast gin.
<rimshot>
RR

Well, I immediately thought schizophrenia, but in the link Revenant Threshold provided I see that our seraphic buddy has already thought of that & explained why he can’t accept that he is, so fair enough.

Cite? :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: