As a finale, though, there was, and ever will be if the women of the bridge club have their say, a curious dessert involving one scoop each of Bassetts coffee ice cream and, traditionally, raspberry sherbet. ("Sherbet! Never sorbet," volunteered one member. "I ran into sorbet in a hotel in Chicago between courses; it's not a dessert. It's to cleanse the palate.")
Anne Jenkins, who has been coming to the club since 1945, noted that the pairing was "at every deb ball in the '40s." She can see it in her mind's eye - the lace doily beneath the squat silver (or silver-plate) sherbet cup: She sketches one with a flourish in the notebook of a guest.
To some, the combination is a jaunty step beyond vanilla, a natural result of the particular affinity of the colors, just as chocolate ice cream was always served with orange sherbet.
The more whimsical explanation is that the coffee ice cream and raspberry sherbet echo the even older custom of serving coffee and fresh raspberries as refreshment at events across the Philadelphia social circuit.
The women of the club tend to be in their 70s now, and 80s, and a handful are even older. They remember dance classes beneath the barrel-vaulted ceiling here off Willow Grove Avenue - boys lined up on one side, girls on the other; the astonishment of encountering so many restaurants on an outing to Boston ("We didn't eat out much. We had cooks"); the food terrain and trimmer profiles before McDonald's ("We had the drugstore and banana splits, not the fast food!").
