Flambé (, , ; also spelled flambe) is a

cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...

procedure in which

alcohol Alcohol may refer to: Common uses * Alcohol (chemistry), a class of compounds * Ethanol, one of several alcohols, commonly known as alcohol in everyday life ** Alcohol (drug), intoxicant found in alcoholic beverages ** Alcoholic beverage, an alco ...

is added to a hot pan to create a burst of flames. The word means "flamed" in French. Flambéing is often associated with the tableside presentation of certain liqueur-drenched dishes set aflame, such as Bananas Foster or Cherries Jubilee when the alcohol is ignited and results in a flare of blue-tinged flame. However, flambéing is also a step in making coq au vin 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, boiled or steamed pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Great Britain, Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in England in the Middle Ages, me ...

was served flaming in

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

' 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. It recounts the ...

'': "the pudding... blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy". The most common flambé dish appears to have been sweet omelette with

rum Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced i ...

kirsch ''Kirschwasser'' (, , ; German for 'cherry water'), or just ''Kirsch'' (; the term used in Switzerland and France, less so in Germany), is a clear, colourless brandy from Germany, Switzerland, and France, traditionally made from double distill ...

; for example,

Alexis Soyer Alexis Benoît Soyer (4 February 1810 – 5 August 1858) was a French chef, writer and inventor, who made his reputation in Victorian England. Born in north-east France, Soyer trained as a chef in Paris, and quickly built a career that was bro ...

'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 , , ) is a dish made from unleavened batter or dough that is cooked on a frying pan or a griddle. Crêpes are usually one of two varieties: ''sweet crêpes'' () or ''savoury galettes'' (). They are often served ...

, was supposedly invented in 1895 as an accident.

Procedure

Cognac Cognac ( , also , ) is a variety of brandy named after the Communes of France, commune of Cognac, France. It is produced in the surrounding wine-growing region in the Departments of France, departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime. Cogn ...

, rum, or other flavorful

liquor Liquor ( , sometimes hard liquor), spirits, distilled spirits, or spiritous liquor are alcoholic drinks produced by the distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar that have already gone through ethanol fermentation, alcoholic ferm ...

s that are about 40% alcohol (80 USA proof) are considered ideal for flambé.

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

s and

beer Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grain—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The grain is mashed to convert starch in the ...

s have too little alcohol and will not flambé. High-alcohol liquors, such as Bacardi 151 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, biscuits, b ...

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". The flash point is somet ...

at room temperature, and there are not enough alcoholic vapors to ignite. The

vapor pressure Vapor pressure or equilibrium vapor pressure is the pressure exerted by a vapor in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed phases (solid or liquid) at a given temperature in a closed system. The equilibrium vapor pressure is an indicat ...

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 (or caramelisation) is a process of browning of sugar used extensively in cooking for the resulting butter-like flavor and brown color. The brown colors are produced by three groups of polymers: (C24H36O18), (C36H50O25), and ...

. 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'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' of two batches of caramelized apples (one flambéed and one simmered), one tester declared the "flambéed dish was for adults, the other for kids."

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

Examples of popular flambé dishes include: * Bananas Foster * Bombe Alaska * Cherries jubilee *

* Crêpes Suzette * Feuerzangenbowle * Flaming beverages * Gundel Palacsinta * Kaiserschmarrn *

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 most likely invented in London in the 1930s. From the 1940s through the 1960s it ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flambe Cooking techniques Culinary terminology * French inventions Table-cooked dishes