The history of the dessert and of the current events that named it.

Baked Alaska is one of those desserts that you may assume was made in Alaska. And yet, the dessert was far far from the 49th state. Learn about the Baked Alaska history and how this iconic show-stopping dessert got its name:

Baked Alaska History: A timeline and a history lesson

The history of Baked Alaska requires a history lesson on the components of the dessert as well as the history of the times when the dessert was named and popularized.

To start, ice cream already existed for a long, long time. In fact, early versions of ice cream were first eaten in China in 200 BC while modern ice cream as we know can date back to the 16th century.

In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson served ice cream in the White House for state galas. Jefferson was known to introduce America to many of the foods he loved while in Europe, including pasta and broccoli.

Around this same time, the meringue was invented in Europe which spawned many desserts in the decades to come including a French classic called “Omelette Norvegiene”. This Norwegian omelette was ice cream encased by meringue and broiled (sounds very familiar). The name referred to France’s frigidly freezing neighbor in the north, Norway.

Across the pond in the 1860s, the famous restaurant Delmonico’s in New York City hired French-born and trained Charles Ranhofer as a chef who worked in the restaurant for close to 30 years until his retirement. Ranhofer gained notoriety for his creations named after famous people and events, including Peach Pudding a la Cleveland after Grover Cleveland the US President at the time.

It was at that time that Russia was negotiating to sell its “frozen frontier” to the US in 1867. New York senator William H. Seward formalized the deal for 2 cents an acre, or $7 million which made Alaska the country’s 49th state.

In honor of this purchase, Ranhofer drew inspiration from the French Omelette Norvegiene which he renamed to “Alaska, Florida” referring to the contrast of temperatures in the states and in the dessert.

His creation featured banana ice cream, walnut spice cake, and meringue torched to a gorgeous golden brown. The name soon changed after a journalist wrote about it as “The ‘Alaska” is baked in ice.” And so Baked Alaska was officially named.

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