Baked Alaska

No, I'm not going to lead this post with some bad joke about Sarah Palin's rumored visits to a tanning salon.  It's a year too late for that.    

The Baked Alaska is a strange dessert.  It's baked and frozen at the same time.  It consists of a sponge cake base, ice cream, and a meringue topping.  The meringue is browned just before serving.  

Here's an individual-sized Baked Alaska I made for Valentine's Day. 

This dish is said to have originated in China.  The idea was introduced to France in 1866 when a master cook from a visiting Chinese delegation taught the French chef Balzaac of the Grand Hotel in Paris how to prepare a dessert of vanilla and ginger ice creams baked in a pastry crust. The French named their dish Surprise Omelette.  Benjamin Thompson, the American-born physicist who later earned the title Count Rumford, is credited with the idea of adding meringue on top, which acts as both an excellent insulator and a poor conductor of heat, thus preventing the ice cream from melting as the meringue was browned in the oven.  

Using this information at the turn of the century, Jean Giroix, pastry chef at the Hotel De Paris in Monte Carlo, popularized the modern form of the dessert.  Now it was called Omelette Norwegienne, possibly because of its resemblance to arctic ice.  The creation then appeared at Delmonico's restaurant in New York City, where it was called "Alaska and the Florida", representing the temperature differences of these two geographic areas and the two components of the dish.  

The first recorded use of the name Baked Alaska is in the 1909 edition of the Fannie Meritt Farmer Cookbook.  Farmer is credited as one of those involved in coming up with the name, in celebration of America's purchase of Alaska in 1868 (though it was a bit after the fact).