Pastry

The white icing comes first, sticky, slightly gooey if it's warm, drizzled in a matrix, a latticework or swirl or whorl of sweet atop yeasty dough painstakingly rolled flat again and again, flour and lard forming paper-thin layers that compress and ooze when bitten, sugar seeping out onto taste buds and into cavities, pain and pleasure emitting forth from this invention of the Danes; manna, not from Heaven, not nourishing but hellish, clogging the arteries and slowing the heart, eventually killing the overweight host by starving it of oxygen, diabetes destroying its internal organs and blinding its eyes, dead at breakfastide, oatmeal and fresh fruit untouched.

But the humorless Norsemen have nothing on Greeks bearing gifts; how about some baklava?