Ritz Carlton Lemon Cake
The past week we just read The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. When looking up on background information about the Ritz Carlton in the 1920s, I incidentally came across a bunch of Ritz Carlton Lemon Cake recipes. As a symbol of the wealth and prosperity of the 1920s, the Ritz Carlton also had a really well known lemon cake that has been enjoyed all the way until now.
It's interesting that it's called the "Ritz Carlton" Lemon Cake, since no matter what recipe you look at, the fundamental way it was made is similar to any other modern lemon cake recipe that you can find now. The way that it's made isn't different than anything else, the phrase "Ritz Carlton" is just to help the lemon cake catch attention; it's a superficial enhancement. This idea that can almost be thought of as "branding", allows for individual recipe bloggers to distinguish themselves from one another. This randomly ties into a concept that we've been going over in Economics class. Monopolistically competitive firms use advertising and distinguishment/differentiation to create short-run profits. Brands, particularly luxury or designer ones (Chanel, Louis Vuitton), pour millions yearly into marketing to associate their name with luxury. The caveat with these monopolistically competitive firms is that in the long run, they never make profits; eventually their brand name dies off and their slogan means nothing again.
This really has a lot to do with what the Washington family is dealing with. They have so many diamonds that the discovery of it would make diamonds meaningless in the world, it would become just another common stone. They shut down their diamond mines and hide themselves from the world to preserve their family's wealth and power, but in the long-run, it will ultimately lead to nothing.
This lemon cake looks so good I'm hungry now... Kroger used to make an amazing vanilla lemon cake but I don't think they have it anymore :(. But I digress; I remember our Econ teacher was telling us that as opposed to becoming permanently successful, what these monopolistic competitiors are doing is making the "short run last longer". And, although I might be making this a little too profound, that's all we (and the characters in Gatsby/DBR) tried to do too- on some level, we know that permanent happiness, permanent wealth, permanent success, permanent life, are all unattainable things, but that doesn't stop us from squeezing it like a wet sponge trying to make it last all it's worth.
ReplyDeleteI like how you connected concepts found in DBR to your Economics class. I haven't taken economics yet, but this just goes to show everything is interrelated. I agree with what you said in the last sentence. Ultimately there would be no purpose for hoarding all that wealth, but I also think that for the Washingtons, there was no purpose for all of that wealth in the beginning; humans are raised to think that wealth will lead to good outcomes, but that isn't necessarily the case. Their pure greed eventually led to their demise, which for some reason didn't shock me too much because like you said, their wealth would lead to nothing.
ReplyDelete- Angela
Wow, okay first of all it is beyond me that you were able to look at Lemon Pound cake and think of Economics class AND connect it to the Washington family. I also completely agree with what you said about how brand names die off and mean nothing again. I feel like humans are slowing becoming hard wired to think of money as the answer to everything, like how the Washington's hid their wealth because they knew its value would depreciate if word got out, and would kill anyone who found out. Like you said nothing is really permanent, and this brings in the idea that maybe instead of worrying about the future, we should take some time just to enjoy the present, because as we saw Braddock worrying about his diamonds future, he was left with nothing in the present.
ReplyDeleteYOOO I remember that day in Econ! Your blog post also reminded me of that Brad Pitt commercial we watched that same day, and how he basically spoke nonsense, but it still helped to viably promote Chanel 5. Also, I'd like to say that lemon cake is superior to all other types of cake (except for chocolate cake, of course). Nice blog post!
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