How Bon Appétit Did Valentine's Day, 1977–1990
If you're looking to make the case that America's eating habits have changed dramatically over the last two decades, let us present as evidence the Valentine's Day–themed recipes that graced Bon Appétit's February covers from 1977 to 1990. Month after month, year after year, the editors came back to a single theme: Put a strawberry on it.
D.E. Wolfe1/8February 1977: Russian Cream with Strawberries Romanoff
In 1977, we poured vodka, triple sec, and rum over a bowl of fresh strawberries and called it Strawberries Romanoff. It was a new world, an uncharted path lined with plump red fruit. We piled those booze-drenched strawberries around a heart-shaped "velvety molded cream dessert" called Russian Cream. We lived like czars, our tables bedecked in orchids, our pink wine glasses always a solid quarter full. What a life it was.
Dan Wolfe2/8February 1979: Lemon-Berry Cake
The year was 1979. We had a column called "The Compleat Processor," which was solely devoted to recipes that took advantage of the marvelous namesake appliance. We made a cake in the food processor because why not? It was a classic buttermilk cake, layered with raspberry-strawberry filling, topped with whipped cream frosting and garnished with strawberries. We served it on a mirrored platter. It was simple. It was elegant. It was "Simply Elegant Valentine Cake."
Arthur Beck3/8February 1980: Coeur à La Crème
Was it cheese? Was it a very firm panna cotta? Was it...true love? No, it was none of these. It was 1980, the year we made Coeur à la Crème, a cream cheese/whipped cream/cottage cheese mold. We pureed strawberries with kirsch and drizzled the crimson sauce around the Coeur. We glazed more strawberries in warm preserves. We had all the strawberries we could imagine, and we wished for nothing more.
Irwin Horowitz4/8February 1981: Strawberry-Glazed Cream Cheese Cake
We didn't know it then, but this was it: our pièce de résistance. The ultimate combination of our love for drippy, boozy strawberries and our endless fascination with cream cheese. It was 1981. It had graham-cracker crust. It had a sour-cream topping. It didn't not have strawberries. It was glorious.
Irwin Horowitz5/8February 1982: Strawberry-Almond Savarin
It called for a strawberry-almond meringue. It called for a glaze. It called for a strawberry filling. It called for savarin, a yeast-leavened cake. But what would this recipe have been without a big mound of strawberries, glazed in warmed red-currant jelly? It would have been nothing.
Irwin Horowitz6/8February 1984: Chocolate Coeur à la Crème with Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries
Years had passed since the first Coeur à la Crème. This go around, there was chocolate. There was Raspberry-Kirsch Sauce. There were chocolate-dipped strawberries. Things would be different this time.
Kathlene Persoff7/8February 1989: Strawberry Tart with Caramel Glaze and Spun Sugar
1989: We called it the year of the tart. We filled ours with pastry cream and painstakingly decorated it with strawberries of the exact same size. We served it on a bed of lace, roses, ribbons, lockets, and some sort of cut-out of Cupid. It reminded us of love, and also that we would all one day be old and lonely and surrounded by objects freighted with memories.
Kathryn Kleinman8/8February 1990: The Ultimate Valentine Cake
To everything there is a season, and sometime in the early 90s, we learned that February is not the one in which strawberries taste like anything. Hence this would be our swan song, our last hurrah, our paean to a time of chocolate-dipped, heart-shaped, strawberry-festooned decadence. The longer we spent on a single, heart-shaped dessert, the more we felt our lives were worth living. And so we devised the Ultimate Valentine Cake, with a lid of chocolate set askew over a bounty of berries. Happy Valentine's Day.
