Was Baked Alaska Really Created In The Last Frontier?

Not only is a baked Alaska dessert visually stunning, it's a scientific curiosity as well. It consists of a sponge cake base topped with ice cream which is then coated in a thick layer of toasted meringue (the main element in a perfect pavlova). To brown those sweetened egg whites, the entire assembled dessert is placed in a very hot oven for a few minutes –- something not usually advised when a dish contains ice cream. (Then again, there is such a thing as fried ice cream.) Despite its name, baked Alaska wasn't actually created in the 49th American state.

The dessert is tied to a number of origin theories, including one where an American scientist fled to Europe and developed a fascination with meringue; one involving a French pastry chef living in New York; and one that gives credit to the founder of an infamous New Orleans restaurant. As you may have noticed, none of these theories are tied to The Last Frontier. The name "baked Alaska" probably refers to the chilly ice cream in the dessert getting a blast of heat from an oven. 

The dessert is meant to be a showstopper, often served tableside with waiters pouring a flaming liquor over the meringue to light the whole thing on fire. In this way, it's much like bananas foster and cherries jubilee (which has a royal origin).

The basic roots of baked Alaska (that is, the concept of treating cool foods with heat without melting them) can be seen in the 15th century. Originally published in 1486, "Le Viandier" is a French cookbook that includes a recipe where butter is coated in starch and placed under heat to make fried butter. Jumping ahead 400 years, there are various accounts from Europeans of "roasted" or "baked" ice from China. Descriptions involve sweetened ice (potentially a predecessor of ice cream) wrapped in dough, cooked, and served before the ice melts.

While the concept of the cooking method is described, none of these accounts sounds exactly like baked Alaska as we know it. One theory of the specific dessert points to Sir Benjamin Thompson, who was later known as Count Rumford. An American scientist, physicist, and inventor, Rumford was also a spy for the redcoats during the American Revolution and fled to Europe after the war. His work was based in heat conduction and he found that whipped egg whites (meringue) made for a successful insulating tool. Chefs in France were mesmerized by this idea, and someone brought it to the 1867 Paris World's Fair in the form of what he called "Norwegian omelette." The creative dessert included layers of ice cream and cake coated in meringue which was then browned under fire. It's still a popular dessert in France today.

During this time, Charles Ranhofer, a French chef working as head chef of Delmonico's in New York, introduced a strikingly similar dessert to the city's high society that frequented the restaurant. In fact, there is written evidence that Delmonico's had already been serving the dish as early as 1880. He called his dessert "Alaska, Florida" and it included banana and vanilla ice cream, sweet biscuits coated in apricot jam, and the surrounding caramelized meringue. It's been said that he named the dessert for the Alaska Purchase, but that event didn't happen until 1867; meanwhile he'd included his recipe in his 1864 cookbook, "The Epicurean." It's more likely that "Alaska, Florida" was a nod to the hot and cold contrast of the two locations and, thus, the dessert.

It wasn't until 1896 that the dessert adopted the name we know it by today, at least on paper. "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" by Fannie Farmer was published and included a recipe for "Baked Alaska," a title which has stuck with it for well over 100 years. The New Orleans restaurant, Antoine's, has also been serving baked Alaska since the late 1860s under the establishment's original chef, Antoine Alciatore, however, Antoine's has never stated that he invented the dessert. As much as loose ends can be irritating, there may not be one solid story as to how baked Alaska came to be, only that it didn't happen in Alaska. It was likely pieced together from many minds and places like China, France, and America.