I apologize in advance. This recipe is anything but simple. My father, the same dad who has never met a dessert recipe he didn’t want to try, discovered it recently in the New York Times. When we recalled that my brother Eddie’s birthday was coming up, any resistance there may have been to attempting this dessert was dashed. Never mind that on the day of, Ed couldn’t make it for dinner.
The die was cast, Le Talleyrand was to be made, birthday boy or no birthday boy.
Le Talleyrand is a dessert consisting of a layer of cherries soaked in kirsch, covered by a layer of custard, a layer of meringue, and then flambéed upon serving. The recipe comes from Simone Beck, also known as Simca, Julia Child’s collaborator on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and author of Simca’s Cuisine
. Christine Muhlke of the New York Times describes Simca as ” a woman so high-strung and exacting that she’s indexed in Child’s book with such minutiae as ‘hand injury of,’ ‘Julia’s contretemps with’ and ‘personality and temperament of’? Child called her ‘La Super-Française’; Paul Child called her ‘Sigh-Moan.’ No matter how refined her palate, her haughty, untelegenic French demeanor never won over the American public, and she quietly retired to her kitchens in Paris and Provence.” Of Le Talleyrand Ms. Muhlke wrote, “a fluffy, flambéed dessert that may mark the end of the era when dishes were named after the great men of history, or their mistresses.”
Le Talleyrand was delicious, a little complicated to make but doable, and the flambé part really cool.
Especially when spooning the blue-flamed burning kirsch from the egg shell over the rest of the meringue. We probably didn’t put the egg shell in deep enough, our dessert looks a little more like a volcano than it probably should, but the ooh ahh factor was still there. Enjoy.
The die was cast, Le Talleyrand was to be made, birthday boy or no birthday boy.
Le Talleyrand is a dessert consisting of a layer of cherries soaked in kirsch, covered by a layer of custard, a layer of meringue, and then flambéed upon serving. The recipe comes from Simone Beck, also known as Simca, Julia Child’s collaborator on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and author of Simca’s Cuisine
. Christine Muhlke of the New York Times describes Simca as ” a woman so high-strung and exacting that she’s indexed in Child’s book with such minutiae as ‘hand injury of,’ ‘Julia’s contretemps with’ and ‘personality and temperament of’? Child called her ‘La Super-Française’; Paul Child called her ‘Sigh-Moan.’ No matter how refined her palate, her haughty, untelegenic French demeanor never won over the American public, and she quietly retired to her kitchens in Paris and Provence.” Of Le Talleyrand Ms. Muhlke wrote, “a fluffy, flambéed dessert that may mark the end of the era when dishes were named after the great men of history, or their mistresses.”Le Talleyrand was delicious, a little complicated to make but doable, and the flambé part really cool.
Especially when spooning the blue-flamed burning kirsch from the egg shell over the rest of the meringue. We probably didn’t put the egg shell in deep enough, our dessert looks a little more like a volcano than it probably should, but the ooh ahh factor was still there. Enjoy.
Le Talleyrand Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 16-ounce cans dark cherries, pitted
- 1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup kirsch or dark rum
- 4 egg yolks
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- About 2/3 cup blanched almonds, finely ground
- 4 1/2 tablespoons flour, preferably cake flour
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 10 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar plus extra for sifting
- 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 7 egg whites
- Pinch of salt
- 3 tablespoons slivered almonds
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