Each year on November 27, people across the country observe National Bavarian Cream Pie Day.
To make a Bavarian Cream Pie, Bavarian cream, also called crème bavaroise, is poured into a baked pie crust and refrigerated. French chef, Marie Antione Careme is given credit for the invention of Bavarian cream, which is a gelatin-based pastry cream originally served in gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels in France in the early 19th century.
- Bavarian cream was originally a cold dessert of egg custard stiffened with gelatin, mixed with whipped cream (sometimes with fruit purée or other flavors), then set in a mold, or used as a filling for cakes and pastries.
- The suffix ‘crème’ in German speaking lands, is the term for the gelatin mold used to make it.
- True Bavarian creams first appeared in the U.S. in Boston Cooking School cookbooks, by Mrs D.A. Lincoln, 1884, and by Fannie Merritt Farmer, 1896. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook offers a “Bavarian Cream”.
- Bavarian cream is a rich dessert which is designed to be served cold, usually un-molded onto a plate and garnished with things like fresh fruit. It is made by blending whipped cream with a rich yolks-only egg custard and chilling the mixture until it sets.
- No one is sure about the origin of Bavarian cream, but during the late 17th and early 18th centuries many French chefs worked at the court of the Wittelsbach Princes. This would have given them the contact to have learned it in Bavaria.
- The dish appears to have emerged in a recognizable form in the late 1700’s, and it may in fact have been developed by Marie Antoine Careme, a famous French chef from the late 18th century.
- Before the advent of refrigeration, Bavarian cream represented a culinary triumph. In order to set the dish, the Bavarian cream would have had to be chilled in an ice-filled bowl. Typically, the ice would be mixed with salt to bring the freezing point down, encouraging the custard in the bowl to set up.
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