PB is good on pancakes and waffles too. And as a dip for apple slices and celery sticks. And who can resist a Reese’s!
All kinds of things can happen with the lights down low, but that’s much of the fun.
Here in China I’ve seen sweet potato in both sweet and savory dishes, and IME more often in the former, .
My pumpkin/butternut squash fritters are to die for, I assure you.
Yep. Dad’s favourite pancake topping was peanut butter and Karo white corn syrup.
I don’t dip apples and celery in peanut butter. I spread it on/in the slices with a knife.
If it’s not too late to ask, could I see a list of a variety of foods that are predominantly “savory”? It’s a new word for me in terms of expanding in what I thought were the “basic tastes” of
sweet
salty
bitter
sour
Is it in the “piquant” region, “spicy” group or just what?
Ignorance admitted. 
A friend from Portugal (Azores) used to just sprinkle sugar on it, the way people in the U.S. would use salt.
I always heard the preserves/jam/jelly divide described thusly:
Jelly: A spread made from fruit juice, sugar and pectin (if the fruit doesn’t have enough of its own)
Jam: A spread made from pureed fruit, sugar and pectin.
Preserves: A spread made from chunks of fruit, sugar and pectin.
So basically they’re the same thing, but the fruit component is different, or at least in a different form.
Generally speaking, you see certain fruits as jelly, jam or preserves. Grapes are usually jelly, berries and plums are usually jam, and berries, peaches and apricots are usually preserves.
And then there’s marmalade. I used to like the sweet Smuckers orange marmalade but when I’ve tried imported varieties, they seemed bitter. Wikipedia says that people in the UK use Seville oranges, the rind of which adds a bitter flavor. (So not really savory vs sweet.)
The best marmalade is ‘Tawny’, which is fairly bitter. The sweet ones are too fay.
Unfortunately most shop marmalade and jam in Britain is pretty anemic and lacking in succulence: the home-made stuff from church fetes is usually superior.
Mary, Queen of Scots did not name it, though she may have enjoyed some form of marmelada, in the 17th century people, prolly in Scotland, started using Seville Oranges. The previous Portuguese stuff was made from quinces.
Zeldar, “savory” tends to mean not sweet, or possibly even salty. I believe this conversation is about that spectrum, not including the bitter/sour part.
BTW, and fortunately this seems to be a dead trend, but has anyone considered “aspic,” a sort of non-sweet Jello/gelatin component? Yuck.
Yeah, it’s basically just a contrast to the general sense of “sweet.” So, for example, “sweet” crepes are crepes that are served with chocolate, fruit, lightly sweetened curd cheese, whipped cream, that sort of stuff, while “savory” crepes might have salmon or ham or mushrooms in a white sauce, or beef stew in them. So, not sweet stuff.
Thanks a bunch, y’all. I had about decided something like that but just wasn’t sure how to differentiate “sweet and sour” or “hot and spicy” and such. A Cajun buddy makes a fine Sauce Piquant (that’s not his exact recipe) and I’m wondering how far that is from a “savory” dish.
I’m shocked that Bananas/Plantains haven’t come up (I searched but didn’t find any references to it).
For the purposes of sweet vs savory, yes, that would be considered “savory.” Almost anything you’d normally eat in the US for dinner would be “savory,” and almost anything you’d eat for dessert would be “sweet.” And there’s plenty of dishes that are a combination. Here’s a reasonable explanation.
So, for example, here in America, we tend to think of peanut butter as something to go with sweet stuff. Like peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and chocolate. Or in dessert cakes. Stuff like that. In other parts of the world, you will find peanut butter used in non-sweet dishes, like in a chicken stew. That is definitely not a sweet use for peanut butter.
Oatmeal, that’s another one. Most people in the US like their oatmeal sweet, with stuff like fruit, maple syrup, brown sugar, etc. I like my oatmeal with savory ingredients, like a poached egg, hot pepper, diced scallions, etc.
It builds off yogurt, but lassis offered by US Indian restaurants are usually sweet and fruity. But in India they are just as likely to be salted.
Butter was hard to get in China, but one day my local supermarket had big, enticing, delicious looking tubs of butter. I bought one, dreaming of frying up some steamed buns in butter and pretending like it was American toast. That is, at least, until I got home and discovered it had been whipped with sugar. Blech. To add insult to injury, I them got to hear Chinese people lecture me on how American food was too sweet.
Tamagoyaki, a Japanese style omelette, usually is a sweet dish when made “plain”. There’s both soy sauce and mirin/sugar in it, but usually there’s about twice as much of the sweet stuff.
It’s too sweet for my poor taste buds that are used to savory eggs, so I adapt mine to have about equal levels of salty and sweet. I never really liked eggs much before, but I could eat this stuff all day! Adding sugar to my eggs (and the act of them carmelizing slightly in the pan) really opened up a whole new eggy world for me.
My great-uncle and my grandfather always salted their watermelon.
My father did that, and I picked up the habit. But it’s still sweet.
Cornbread comes to mind. They aren’t different countries anymore but southern (USA) cornbread is usually savory and northern is usually sweeter.
