A Rhubarb Fool

On Sunday, we had my cousin Elise and her husband Gordon over for dinner. We traditionally have them over for Easter dinner, but they will be out of town this year. So we did it instead on Palm Sunday, which of course also happened to be April Fools.

Rhubarb

In a nod to the Fools "holiday" I made this Rhubarb Fool for dessert. Really, I made it as sort of a joke, but it was fantastic--raves all around. I'll definitely make it again, especially since it was uber-easy.

But, the dessert lead to a discussion of the origins of "Fool." I knew the dessert was British, but Drake won the prize in guessing that the term "fool" might be a bastardization of something French:

The mind races through the numerous allusions made to fools, from the fool that accompanied King Lear on his howling journey across the moors to the more modern blunderer plaintively asking "What Kind of Fool Am I." But the name of this gossamer dessert comes from the French word foulé meaning pressed or crushed, and refers to the combination of crushed fruits and thick cream. It is a dish that is sublime in its simplicity.

The British countryside is a paradise for berry lovers. It offers gooseberries, red currants, strawberries, raspberries. One can even sing "here we go round the mulberry tree" while plucking the small, blackberry-like fruit. Any of these fruits might have been used to make fools.

This simple dish, so refreshing on a summer's day, might find its modern equivalent in popularity to the omnipresent 'yogurt with fruit on bottom,' though no artificially sweetened yogurt can compare to fresh crushed fruit and cream. The fool is also the beginning of ice cream, a dish that required refrigeration to arrive at the status it holds today as summer's favorite dessert.