With the upcoming release of Yummy: The History of Desserts, I was so chuffed to get a chance to interview Victoria Grace Elliot about her debut graphic novel.
Where did the idea for Yummy come from?
In the years leading up to Yummy, I’d already been doing a lot of food and daily life research for my first work, a webcomic that featured a witch who bakes without magic. I’d been doing all kinds of looks back on how bread was made, and even learned about the Macaron Sisters–the main highlight of Yummy’s Macaron chapter–for a side story I wrote.
As it turns out, Gina Gagliano reached out to me to encourage me to pitch something to Random House Graphic. I didn’t know what to pitch at the time, but my agent, Steven Salpeter had a meeting with her over ice cream, where she talked about hoping for a book about food history! Steven knew that’d be up my alley, so we talked it over, and I immediately began workshopping a pitch.
My biggest hurdle was trying to figure out how to talk about food history. I’d played with the idea of having a grandmother talking to a granddaughter, or doing a Wishbone type framing, but ultimately I was really drawn to illustrations of food with cute, small characters that could interact with desserts as if they were larger-than-life. That’s how I came up with the food sprites: Peri, Fee, and Fada! As I did the research, I realized they could each have a particular strength to keep the history engaging. One could tell legends, another could guide us through the science labs, and another could act as historical figures.
What was the criteria for what you chose against what you didn’t choose?
Well, for the larger chapters, I had a pretty clear idea starting out what I wanted to pursue. Cookies, cake, ice cream; those desserts are all pretty iconic. Getting into both the shorter chapters, and the specific kinds of cake, cookies, etc. I talk about, that was led a lot by just what I was interested in.
Some of these were my favorite desserts, like the egg tart or mochi ice cream, while others I stumbled upon while doing research. A big part of it was how it fit into the overall “narrative” of Yummy. For example, does it have an interesting story? Then it would make a good legend for Peri’s Story Time! Was there a historical event or figure who Fee could play in an Interview Corner? That kind of thing.
I also wanted to include versions of desserts from many different places, so I tried to find regional desserts and variations from places outside of North America and Europe. And, of course, it all depended on the information I could find. My research was naturally limited by the resources available to me and the fact that I can only speak English.
Sometimes, they just didn’t fit into the “narrative” of Yummy! Like, I really wanted to include the history of gooey butter cake, but it didn’t work out in this book.
Did you end up making all the deserts? Which was the hardest?
Yes! I made all the recipes included in Yummy and altered them as I needed. For me the hardest is always cake!! I’m really particular with the kinds of cake I like. Ideally, I like it light and fluffy and as moist as possible, but I’m still a deeply amateur baker. I think the recipe comes out plenty tasty, but the techniques required to make a really light cake are still out of my skill level. Stuff like double-boilers and all that. I made sure to keep that recipe simple, because it really is easy to mess up a scratch-made cake!
I think the most physically taxing recipes from the book are the ice cream recipe and the pie crust recipe. Your arms will definitely hurt the day after after shaking up the cream or rolling out that frozen dough! But it is totally worth it. They’re so delicious!!
What are you working on next?
I’m fortunately working on another book in the Yummy series! This one isn’t a direct sequel, but it does build off of a lot of the themes from the first book. As luck would have it, I got to include the history of some foods that I couldn’t in the first book, like the gooey butter cake I mentioned before!
This one focuses on foods that make you wonder how they were thought up, like packaged foods, cheese, and pickles. I had so many questions about other types of food while researching the first book, and I think both of these books together satisfy my hunger for learning and writing about food history.
