Inspired By Iced Pastry

It blows hot and cold

Baked Alaska is, as everyone knows, a sweet dessert. This type of dessert is not new... In Le Cuisinier, a culinary reference published in 1656, Pierre de Lune describes a "confit lemon peel dessert.” The author specifies that it can also be prepared with pistachios, orange or raspberries. He also mentions a cream dessert, made with whole eggs, sweetened with lemon and decorated with pomegranate seeds. Baked Alaska is thought to have been invented in 1867 by Balzac. Here, we’re not referring to the famous writer , but the head chef of the Grand Hôtel in Paris. He is said to have served this unusual dessert at a reception organized as part of the Exposition universelle [World's Fair]. Balzac is said to have wanted to pay tribute to the progress of science by creating a recipe highlighting a scientific discovery: the non conductibility of heat by beaten egg white. In La Grande Cuisine illustrée (1900), Prosper Salles and Prosper Montagné report that the true inventor of the Baked Alaska could be physicist Benjamin Thompson, Count of Rumford. In 1804, in the course of his research into heat conductivity, he "described covering an iced cheese with a layer of whisked eggs and placing it in a hot oven. As a result, he proved that the air trapped in the eggs was enough to stop the heat.” While these research projects did indeed exist, there's no guarantee that their results ever left the pastry kitchen and gave rise to the baked Alaska. Particularly as the physicist died in 1814, several decades before the recipe was even mentioned.

In 1891, the magazine L'Art culinaire proposed a recipe for a "Baked Alaska". But it's very different from today's version. It consists of small, thin omelettes, rolled and arranged in a pyramid on a platter, and coated on one side with anchovy purée! It wasn't until 1900 that a sweet version appeared: in their above-mentioned book, Montagné and Salles mention a "baked Alaska or surprise soufflé", a cake with a "layer of sponge cake soaked in kirsch and maraschino.” The ice cream, placed on top, is covered with a soufflé omelette filling (sweetened yolks and stiffly beaten egg whites), which is sprinkled with icing sugar, before being "baked for 4–5 minutes in a very hot oven.” The 1903 Guide culinaire describes a "baked surprise or Alaska" which is still made using a mixture of egg yolks and egg whites. This is no longer the case in the 1912 edition, where egg whites take center stage: they must cook and color quickly, "without the heat penetrating to the ice cream inside", as Auguste Escoffier reminds us.

The egg whites should color quickly, before the heat penetrates to the ice cream

Nowadays, the baked Alaska (an allusion to this Scandinavian country's icy, snowy winter climate?) is prepared using a sponge cake base soaked in an alcoholic syrup. Ice cream is added and covered with Italian meringue. The ensemble is quickly placed in a very hot oven until the egg whites become opaque, before the dessert is flambéed in front of guests. In addition to these two classic iced pastries, some artisans are now rivalling in ingenuity to offer their customers original iced desserts of impeccable quality, using carefully selected raw materials (milk, cream, eggs, fruit, vanilla, cocoa, coffee...) and offering total traceability. These iced desserts combine soft sponge cake, meringues (Italian or otherwise), confit fruit and, of course, ice creams (sometimes made using raw milk from local farms) and sorbets rich in delicately flavored, quality fruit. At the same time, a number of classic cakes are revisited in iced versions: lemon meringue pie, kougelhopf, cake, fruit charlotte, macaroons and merveilleux, for example.