![Cailles roties P1150414](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Cailles_roties_P1150414.jpg)
:''Flambé is also a type of
ceramic glaze
Ceramic glaze is an impervious layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fused to a pottery body through firing. Glaze can serve to color, decorate or waterproof an item. Glazing renders earthenware vessels suitable for holding ...
.''
Flambé (, , ; also spelled flambe) is a
cooking
Cooking, cookery, or culinary arts is the art, science and craft of using heat to prepare food for consumption. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric stoves, to baking in vario ...
procedure in which
alcohol
Alcohol most commonly refers to:
* Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom
* Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks
Alcohol may also refer to:
Chemicals
* Ethanol, one of sev ...
is added to a hot pan to create a burst of flames. The word means "flamed" in
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
.
Flambéing is often associated with the tableside presentation of certain liqueur-drenched dishes set aflame, such as
Bananas Foster
Bananas Foster is a dessert made from bananas and vanilla ice cream, with a sauce made from butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, dark rum, and banana liqueur. The butter, sugar and bananas are cooked, and then alcohol is added and ignited. The bananas ...
or
Cherries Jubilee
Cherries jubilee is a dessert dish made with cherries and liqueur (typically kirschwasser), which are flambéed tableside, and commonly served as a sauce over vanilla ice cream.
The recipe is generally credited to Auguste Escoffier, who prepa ...
when the alcohol is ignited and results in a flare of blue-tinged flame. However, flambéing is also a step in the making
coq au vin
''Coq au vin'' (; , "rooster/cock with wine") is a French dish of chicken braised with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic.
A red Burgundy wine is typically used, though many regions of France make variants using local wines, such ...
, and other dishes and sauces, using spirits before they are brought to the table. By partially burning off the volatile alcohol, flambéing reduces the alcoholic content of the dish while keeping the flavors of the liquor.
History
Modern flambéing became popular in the 19th century. The English
Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding is sweet dried-fruit pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of ...
was served flaming in
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
' 1843 novel, ''
A Christmas Carol
''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas ...
'': "the pudding... blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy". The most common flambé dish appears to have been sweet
omelette
In cuisine, an omelette (also spelled omelet) is a dish made from beaten eggs, fried with butter or oil in a frying pan (without stirring as in scrambled egg). It is quite common for the omelette to be folded around fillings such as chives ...
with
rum
Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is usually aged in oak barrels. Rum is produced in nearly every sugar-producing region of the world, such as the Ph ...
or
kirsch
Kirschwasser (, ; , German for "cherry water") or kirsch is a clear, colorless brandy traditionally made from double distillation of morello cherries, a dark-colored cultivar of the sour cherry. It is now also made from other kinds of cherri ...
; for example,
Alexis Soyer
Alexis Benoît Soyer (4 February 18105 August 1858) was a French chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England. He also tried to alleviate suffering of the Irish poor in the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), and contributed a p ...
's 1846 cookbook, ''The Gastronomic Regenerator'', gives a recipe for ''Omelette au Rhum'': "...the moment of going to table pour three glasses of rum round and set it on fire". Ida Joscelyne's book, ''The Marvellous Little Housekeepers'' (1880), mentions both rum and kirsch; another recipe appears in A.G. Payne's English cookbook, ''Choice Dishes at Small Cost'', of 1882: "Make a sweet omelet, and heat a tablespoonful of kirsch, by holding a light under the spoon. As soon as the spirit catches fire pour it round the omelet, and serve flaming." Perhaps the most famous flambé dish,
Crêpe Suzette
A crêpe or crepe ( or , , Quebec French: ) is a very thin type of pancake. Crêpes are usually one of two varieties: ''sweet crêpes'' () or ''savoury galettes'' (). They are often served with a wide variety of fillings such as cheese, ...
, was supposedly invented in 1895 as an accident.
Procedure
Cognac
Cognac ( , also , ) is a variety of brandy named after the commune of Cognac, France. It is produced in the surrounding wine-growing region in the departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime.
Cognac production falls under French appella ...
,
rum
Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is usually aged in oak barrels. Rum is produced in nearly every sugar-producing region of the world, such as the Ph ...
, or other flavorful
liquor
Liquor (or a spirit) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit drink, distilled beverage or h ...
s that are about 40% alcohol (80
USA proof) are considered ideal for flambé.
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...
s and
beer
Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...
s have too little alcohol and will not flambé. High-alcohol liquors, such as
Bacardi 151
Bacardi 151 is a discontinued brand of highly alcoholic rum made by Bacardi Limited of Hamilton, Bermuda. It is named for its alcohol concentration level of 151 U.S. proof, that is, 75.5% alcohol by volume. This is much higher than typical rum, ...
or
Everclear, are highly flammable and considered too dangerous by professional cooks.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus '' Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakf ...
is sometimes added not only for flavor but for show, as the powder ignites when added.
The alcoholic beverage must be heated before lighting it on fire. This is because the liquid is still below the
flash point
The flash point of a material is the "lowest liquid temperature at which, under certain standardized conditions, a liquid gives off vapours in a quantity such as to be capable of forming an ignitable vapour/air mixture". (EN 60079-10-1)
The fl ...
at room temperature, and there are not enough alcoholic vapors to ignite. The
vapor pressure
Vapor pressure (or vapour pressure in English-speaking countries other than the US; see spelling differences) or equilibrium vapor pressure is defined as the pressure exerted by a vapor in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed pha ...
increases by heating it, releasing enough vapors to catch fire from the match.
Effects on taste
Flambéing reduces the alcohol content of the food modestly. In one experimental model, about 25% of the alcohol was boiled off. The effects of the flames are also modest: although the temperature within the flame may be quite high (over 500 °C), the temperature at the surface of the pan is lower than that required for a
Maillard browning reaction or for
caramelization
Caramelization is a process of browning of sugar used extensively in cooking for the resulting sweet nutty flavor and brown color. The brown colors are produced by three groups of polymers: caramelans (C24H36O18), caramelens (C36H50O25), and ca ...
.
Whether or not there is a change in flavor as a result of flambéing is unclear. Some claim that because the flame is above the food, and since hot gases rise, it cannot significantly affect the flavor. Indeed, experimental work shows that most people cannot tell the difference.
That said, in an informal
taste test conducted by the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'' of two batches of caramelized apples (one flambéed and one
simmered
Simmering is a food preparation technique by which foods are cooked in hot liquids kept just below the boiling point of water (lower than ) and above poaching temperature (higher than ). To create a steady simmer, a liquid is brought to a boil, ...
), one tester declared the "flambéed dish was for adults, the other for kids."
Others, however, dispute this and quote celebrated French chefs who claim that flambéing is strictly a show-biz aspect of the restaurant business that ruins food but is done to create an impressive visual presentation at a dramatic point in the preparation of a meal.
Safety
For safety, it is recommended that alcohol not be added to a pan on a burner and that the cook use a long fireplace match to ignite the pan.
Flambé dishes
![Bombe Alaska, Shashlik Restaurant, Singapore - 20140125](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Bombe_Alaska%2C_Shashlik_Restaurant%2C_Singapore_-_20140125.jpg)
Examples of popular flambé dishes include:
*
Bananas Foster
Bananas Foster is a dessert made from bananas and vanilla ice cream, with a sauce made from butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, dark rum, and banana liqueur. The butter, sugar and bananas are cooked, and then alcohol is added and ignited. The bananas ...
*
Bombe Alaska
Baked Alaska, also known as Bombe Alaska, ''omelette norvégienne, omelette surprise,'' or ''omelette sibérienne'' depending on the country, is a dessert consisting of ice cream and cake topped with browned meringue. The dish is made of ice c ...
*
Cherries jubilee
Cherries jubilee is a dessert dish made with cherries and liqueur (typically kirschwasser), which are flambéed tableside, and commonly served as a sauce over vanilla ice cream.
The recipe is generally credited to Auguste Escoffier, who prepa ...
*
Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding is sweet dried-fruit pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of ...
*
Crêpes Suzette
Crêpes Suzette () is a French dessert consisting of crêpes with ''beurre Suzette'' (), a sauce of caramelized sugar and butter, tangerine or orange juice, zest, and Grand Marnier, triple sec or orange Curaçao liqueur on top, flambéed tables ...
*
Feuerzangenbowle
' () () is a traditional German alcoholic drink for which a rum-soaked sugarloaf is set on fire and drips into mulled wine. It is often part of a Christmas or New Year's Eve tradition. The name translates literally as ''fire-tongs punch'', “ ...
*
Flaming beverage
A flaming drink is a cocktail or other mixed drink that contains flammable, high-proof alcohol, which is ignited before consumption. The alcohol may be an integral part of the drink, or it may be floated as a thin layer across the top of the d ...
s
*
Gundel Palacsinta
Gundel is a well-known restaurant located in the Budapest City Park, Hungary.
History
A previous restaurant in the spot, ''Wampetich'', opened in 1894. In 1910, Károly Gundel took over the Wampetich's lease and operated the restaurant. His ...
*
Steak Diane
Steak Diane is a dish of pan-fried beefsteak with a sauce made from the seasoned pan juices. It was originally cooked tableside and sometimes flambéed. It was probably invented in London in the 1930s. From the 1940s to the 1960s it was a stand ...
*
Crème brûlée
''Crème brûlée'' or ''crème brulée'' (; ), also known as burnt cream or Trinity cream, and virtually identical to the original crema catalana, is a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar ...
See also
*
List of cooking techniques
This is a list of cooking techniques commonly used in cooking and food preparation.
Cooking is the art of preparing food for ingestion, commonly with the application of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, refle ...
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flambe
Cooking techniques
Culinary terminology
*
French inventions
Table-cooked dishes