Baked Alaska.... A Stunning Dessert
Baked Alaska is a dessert made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven just long enough to firm the meringue. The meringue is an effective insulator, and in the short cooking time needed, it prevents the heat getting through to the ice cream.
The notion of cooking a dessert with ice cream as its core ingredient within an insulated covering seems to have originated with the Chinese, who used pastry for the casing. It was introduced to Europe in the mid-nineteenth century when a Chinese delegation visited Paris. The use of meringue was then introduced in 1804 by the American physicist Benjamin Thompson. He investigated the heat resistance of beaten egg whites; the results demonstrated that while pastry would conduct the heat to the ice cream, beaten egg whites would do so to a lesser extent. The dished was named omelette surprise or omelette à la norvégienne; the Norwegian epithet was used due to its arctic appearance and cold centre. This title transformed into "Baked Alaska" in 1876 when Delmonico's Restaurant in New York City named it in honour of the newly acquired territory of Alaska. It was popularised worldwide by the chef Jean Giroix in 1895 at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. The dessert was once a popular choice for dinner parties, especially throughout the 1960s, but its popularity has waned in recent years.
A variation, called Bomb Alaska calls for some dark rum to be splashed over the Baked Alaska. Lights are then turned down and the whole dessert is flambé while being served.
Another version calls for raspberry filling to be substituted for the ice cream, or even for the filling to be added along with the ice cream.
