The most iconic desserts of the last 100 years revealed (2024)

From lavish Edwardian banquets to outlandish modern innovations, wherever there’s food, in whatever era, you can be sure that it’ll be followed by dessert.

Celebrating the weird, the wonderful and the just plain wrong, this infographic reveals the the ultimate rundown of the best sweet treats of the last century.

From Devil's Food Cake and Eton Mess to Upside Down Pineapple cake and Black Forest Gateau, here are some of thethe sugar-coated wonder of desserts of the decades.

The graphic, by BookaTable, delves into the desserts that we swooned over the decades, kicking things off, suitably enough, at the turn of the century.

Devil’s Food Cake was created as an act of rebellion by US chefs against the pious, reserved Victorian influence of the 1910s.

The indulgent chocolate and fudge-filled masterpiece was the ultimate in dessert development at that time.

And while we’re all used to the classic sponge cake, this was the time when the humble pud was seen as the epitome of after-dinner decadence.

In the 1920s the iconic Eton Mess, a sloppy mixture of strawberries, whipped cream and pieces of meringue, was a highly sought-after sweet treat.

Rumour has it that the dish was created at an Eton cricket match, when a drunken spectator fell on a picnic basket containing the ingredients.

Also popular in the twenties were dessert co*cktails and in 1925, savvy chefs cashed in by replacing dessert with drinks decorated with sugary syrup glaze and crumbled biscuit toppings.

In the thirties it was the turn of the Pavlova to take centre stage.

The Russian cousin of the Eton Mess, this decadent meringue creation was the ultimate in fashionable dessert for the chattering classes.

The dessert, which consists of a meringue crust topped with whipped cream and fresh fruits, is said to have been inspired by the fluffy white tutu of Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, considered to be the greatest ballerina of her time.

The dish was said to have been created by a chef at a hotel in Wellington, New Zealand when the ballerina visited the country in 1926 on her world tour.

However, the creation of the dish is in dispute between the Kiwis and the Aussies, with the latter claiming that they were the ones who invented it when Anna Pavlova was a guest of Hotel Esplanade in Perth, Australia.

On the opposite end of the pudding spectrum but also popular in the thirties was cornmeal mush, a wartime staple made using cornmeal, water and a sprinkling of sugar, and served as a sweetener after dinner.

As war time rationing rumbled on into the forties, home cooks were becoming more resourceful and experimenting with leftovers like old bread crusts.

Bread and butter pudding, studded with raisins and sometimes served with custard, is not to everyone’s taste but there are who consider it a national treasure.

But for every bread and butter pudding there were many more no-bake chocolate cakes.

Made using cocoa powder and breadcrumbs to conserve ingredients such as eggs and milk, these cakes were said to be hard and unappetising.

The fanciful fifties heralded the entrance of two frivolous confections; the knickerbocker glory and a baked Alaska.

The former featured ice-cream, meringue and tinned fruit, layered in a sundae glass and topped with syrup, nuts, whipped cream and a cherry whilst the latter, a flaming showstopper of a pudding, was guaranteed to impress every party guest.

An expert melange of hot and cold, the dessert of baked ice-cream, was the soufflé of its time and still has the ability to wow even the most cynical of diners, mainly for being unashamedly theatrical and unapologetically dramatic.

Upside down pineapple cake was dessert de rigueur in the Swinging Sixties.

Simple to bake, syrupy sweet and a real family favourite, it was only usurped in its position as best 60s dessert by the wobbly jelly dessert.

Sixties chefs were obsessed by setting literally anything in brightly coloured jelly.

This included chopped vegetables, eggs and even Span. Desserts however were slightly more palatable, although not as adventurous, and featured various tinned or fresh fruits such as pineapple rings and strawberries, encased in a translucent wibbly prison and topped with a generous squirt of whipped cream, but of course.

Decadent, hot, sweet and shareable, the chocolate fountain could be found at the centre of any trendy seventies dinner party.

Following the footsteps of its cheesy fondue sibling, this indulgent dessert demonstrated that sometimes the best puddings need involve no more than a huge bowl of melted chocolate.

Another seventies classic, a black forest gateau was all the rage in the most fashionable of dinner tables.

Imported from Germany, it was originally named Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and featured a several layers of chocolate sponge with whipped cream, cherries and kirsch between each layer.

The whole cake is then decorated with more whipped cream, maraschino cherries and chocolate shavings.

The decade of excess, in the eighties we were all in thrall to trifle, the over-the-top creation of three or four items, all which could be considered individual puddings in their own right, combined to make one monster dessert, topped off with whipped cream, naturally.

Made from tinned fruit, custard, solidified sponge, alcohol and yes, more whipped cream, the pud enjoyed a renaissance after it was e by Birds Custard.

And what would dessert had been without the fantastically French croquembouche tower?

A glorious look-at-me tottering mound of sumptuous choux pastry balls filled with crème pâtissière, sealed with caramel and decorated with a delicate net of spun sugar, this spectacular creation was guaranteed to take your breath away.

The health-kick craze of the nineties meant more than colourful leotards and Mr Motivator.

Desserts also went through a change; metamorphosing from sinful to saintly.

Frozen yogurt kicked things off, usually topped with a variety of fruit and nuts.

What many did not realise, however, was that some of the yogurts they were chowing down on were far more fattening (and far less satisfying) than ice-cream.

The nineties were also saw the advent of the infantilisation of puddings.

Parents started stealing popping candy from their children, incorporating into countess desserts, from cheesecakes and apple pie to ice-cream, cookies and sponge cake.

The spotlight was on cupcakes in the 2000s, with the bijou creations popping up everywhere.

Small and fluffy, colourful and couture or giant and covered in sprinkles, these mini, overly frosted sponges are still hanging around, unfortunately.

The 2000s were also when science lab and kitchen collided, with Heston Blumenthal kickstarting the obsession for liquid nitrogen everything.

All manner of puddings were frozen or set alight at the table and if you weren’t anyone if you werent indulging in these danger-tinged desserts.

So far this decade has proven to be a real portmanteau paradise in the food world with recipe rebels fusing any two ingredients they can lay their hands on.

From cronuts and cruffins to cookie-cupcakes and duffins (doughnut and muffin), the craze for these sometimes monstrous Frakenpastries is still going strong.

However, that doesn’t mean we've forgotten our love of all things small and delicate.

Minute macarons, available in every colour and flavour under the sun, are the antithesis of mutant desserts and have taken over from the cupcakes in fashionable circles.