Created About 1802 It Wasn’t Called Baked Alaska Until The 1867 Purchase Of Alaska

Ice cream and cake come together on February 1st in a celebration called National Baked Alaska Day.

• Early versions of Baked Alaska appeared as early as 1802. According to historians, Thomas Jefferson was one of the first presidents to serve ice cream at a state banquet in the White House. As the story goes, Jefferson requested the ice cream to be served encased in a hot pastry.
• In 1804, American physicist Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) – who invented several cooking devices, including the double boiler and coffee percolator – was curious about the resistance of beaten egg whites to heat. What he discovered was a new dessert, naming it ‘omelette surprise.’
• By the 1850s, ice cream ‘bombes’ – uniquely shaped molds filled with creamy custard before frozen – and meringue-encased desserts were popular at teas and formal dinners.
• Aunt Mary’s 1855 cookbook, The Philadelphia Housewife, was the first to feature a baked meringue, including ‘Apples aux Pommes’ and ‘Baked Alaska Apple Pie.’
• This dessert is also called omelette á la norvégienne, Norwegian omelette, omelette surprise, and glace au four (ice cream in oven).
• In the United States in 1867, an earnest debate erupted over the potential purchase of Alaska from Russia. Secretary of State William Seward agreed to a purchase price of $7 million, and Alaska became a United States territory in 1868. Those of the opinion that the purchase was a giant mistake referred to the purchase as “Seward’s Folly.”
• Although it was already a popular dish, claims about its genesis continued to be made. In 1866, French food writer Baron Leon Brise stated it was French chef Balzac who introduced the dessert to France
• In 1876, Charles Ranhofer, the chef at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City. He was notorious for naming new and renaming old dishes after famous people and events. Capitalizing on the heated controversy surrounding the purchase in the frozen north, Baked Alaska fit the bill. It was cold, nearly frozen and quickly toasted in a hot oven before serving.
• He served as the chef at Delmonico’s from 1862 to 1896. During his tenure, he also created Lobster Newburg, another famous dish honored with a national food holiday.
• The dessert was developed by Benjamin Thompson. When experimenting with dessert techniques, he realized that while pastries would conduct the heat and protect a cold core, a layer of meringue would do so to an even greater degree.
• It is was supposedly later popularized worldwide by Jean Giroix, chef in 1895 at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.
• Early versions of this dessert used pie crusts instead of meringue.
• As part of its “Lick Global Warming” campaign, in 2005, Ben & Jerry’s protested the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by whipping up the world’s largest Baked Alaska. The dessert weighed 1,140 pounds and measured 4 feet tall and 4 feet around, with the help of 3,600 four-ounce scoops of Ben & Jerry’s Fossil Fuel ice cream, 90 pounds of cake and 150 pounds of marshmallow cream.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Mobile-Cuisine

Culture Trip

NPR