Lost Desserts
by Gail Monaghan
Rizzoli, 2007
$45.00, cloth
199 pages
There is something about desserts that demands exultation. Their luxurious ingredients, the special occasions they mark, and their presentation - set aflame, perched on pedestals, carried aloft and placed at the center of a cleared table - make for drama and delight.
A handful of fat-free chocolate chip cookies or a few mouthfuls of ice cream spooned from the container don't have the same effect. In our concern for calories, we've lost the sense of ceremony that a grand dessert can impart. Luckily for bakers, sweetooths, or anyone who appreciates kitchen theater, Monaghan has resurrected recipes from famous chefs that bring glory to the table.
Even her recounting in the introduction of what she left out of the book - Indian pudding, Lane Cake, Nesselrode Pudding, Blancmange - will make your mouth water and start your senses dreaming.
She begins spectacularly with Escoffier's Mont Blanc, and if you are at all leery of chestnut puree, the glorious picture of a dramatic mound of sweetened puree topped with an alpine quiff of whipped cream will quell any fears. It begs to be tunneled into with a silver cake trowel.
Desserts like Peach Melba, Charlotte Russe, and Strawberries Romanoff make you long for domed platters and precision service. These recipes are a far cry from the ironic servings of reinvented home cooking favored by of-the-moment pastry chefs - donuts, lollipops, and cookie plates. Monaghan's desserts are for adults.
But not all her recipes recall Diamond Jim. New Orleans Calas, sweetened fried rice balls, Reuben's Apple Pancake, and Schrafft's Coffee Milkshakes are homier sweets that will be lost as traditions become too much trouble, the old restaurants close, and memories fade. Monaghan is a classicist, carefully supplying directions for every element of a dish,with color pictures to guide your presentation. But her recipes are not stodgy. She updates them with ingredients and techniques suited to modern tastes and kitchens, like adding a bit of fresh ginger to rice pudding. And despite their rococo appearance, these are cookable recipes.
The closest you'll come to home cooking here is a recipe like Irish Brown Bread that is brilliantly transformed into ice cream, or Ginger Pear Pudding, a moist gingerbread that is deeply spiced and crowned with caramelized pear halves when unmolded.
There's plenty here for cooks, but also for historians. Each recipe begins with its story. Most of us know that Peach Melba was created for opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, but Monaghan goes beyond the apocryphal stories, researching historical cookbooks and separating fact from stories.
Perhaps you stay up at night reading the history of Delmonico's restaurant, trying to imagine the room's glow, the aromas, and the flavors of Nectarine Plombiere or a Dobos Torte. Maybe you own a cake stand and seek every opportunity to use it. Or perhaps floating island is your answer to most of life's questions, maybe you've never lost these desserts. But you'll want this book rediscover them in all their glory.
© 2007 Claudia Kousoulas
