No. 3538

Alaska, Florida

Prepare a very fine vanilla-flavored Savoy biscuit paste (No. 3231). Butter some plain molds two and three-quarters inches in diameter by one and a half inches in depth; dip them in fecula or flour, and fill two-thirds full with the paste. Cook, turn them out and make an incision all around the bottom; hollow out the cakes, and mask the empty space with apricot marmalade (No. 3675). Have some ice cream molds shaped as shown in Fig. 667, fill them half with uncooked banana ice cream (No. 3466); freeze, unmold and lay them in the hollow of the prepared biscuits; keep in a freezing box or cave. Prepare also a meringue with twelve egg-whites and one pound of sugar. A few moments before serving place each biscuit with its ice on a small lace paper, and cover one after the other with the meringue pushed through a pocket furnished with a channeled socket, beginning at the bottom and diminishing the thickness until the top is reached; color this meringue for two minutes in a hot oven, and when a light golden brown remove and serve at once.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is baked Alaska in its earliest printed American form, built as individual portions rather than one large dome. Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so the working recipe depends on three other entries; the notes below cover what you need to reconstruct it.

Savoy biscuit pasteNo. 3231 is the batter for biscuit de Savoie — a whipped-egg sponge (yolks and whites usually beaten separately), the same family as ladyfingers and savoiardi, leavened only by air and commonly stiffened with a share of potato starch. Any firm, dry vanilla sponge batter will behave the same way in the molds.
FeculaPotato starch. Buttered molds dusted with it release more cleanly than with flour and leave no floury taste on the crust.
The moldsTwo and three-quarter inches across by one and a half deep is close to a standard muffin cup, and a muffin tin filled two-thirds full is the practical substitute. The recipe gives no yield; the meringue is made with twelve whites and a pound of sugar, enough to cover a batch rather than a single portion.
"Uncooked" ice creamIn Ranhofer's system this means a mixture of cream, sugar and fruit with no cooked custard base — not an unfinished preparation. Banana ice cream churned today will do; freeze it very hard, since it must survive both unmolding and the oven.
Apricot marmaladeNo. 3675 is a thick, sieved apricot preserve, not citrus marmalade. A good apricot jam warmed and pushed through a sieve gives the right density; it needs to be stiff enough to line the hollowed cake without soaking it.
Freezing box or caveA compartment packed with ice and salt, as used for storing and hardening molded ices. A domestic freezer set as cold as it goes serves the same purpose. Assemble the cake-and-ice-cream units and hold them frozen solid before the meringue goes on.
Pocket with a channeled socketA piping bag with a fluted or star tip. Piping from the base upward and thinning toward the point is what gives the classic ridged cone; leave no gap at the bottom, or heat reaches the ice cream.
A hot oven, two minutesThe book gives no temperature; a very hot oven, somewhere around 450F in modern terms, is the usual reading, and the two minutes should be treated as an outside limit — you are coloring the sugar, not baking. Watch it continuously and pull the tray the moment the ridges take a light gold. A kitchen torch does the same job with less risk to the ice cream.
Raw egg whiteTwo minutes of surface heat browns the meringue without cooking through it, so the interior stays essentially raw. If that matters for who is eating, use pasteurized whites, or build the meringue as a Swiss or Italian one, which is cooked by hot syrup or a bain-marie before piping.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer was chef at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is his own record of that kitchen; this entry is among the earliest printed recipes for what English speakers came to call baked Alaska. The name is generally traced to the 1867 purchase of Alaska, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented, and "Florida" is usually read as the other half of the joke — the hot meringue against the frozen center. The trick itself was not new: stiff beaten egg white is a poor conductor of heat, and French kitchens of the period served a comparable omelette norvégienne. What marks this version as Delmonico's is the fussiness of the assembly — individual sponge cases hollowed and lined with apricot, banana ice cream molded separately, each portion set on its own lace paper doily and meringued to order.