This weekend, I’m rolling back the clock to look at some classic desserts that have been gracing restaurant menus for more than 50 years. These retro recipes remind me of a saying that I often return to when writing menus: “Many things come and go, but black clothes, gin and tonic and cash will never go out of fashion.” While I’m slightly sceptical about the cash, it reminds me that recipes that have remained for decades have done so for a reason.
At a time of such uncertainty in the restaurant trade, cooking classically is a decent safety net for keeping a smaller pool of customers coming back. When it comes to home cooking, keeping things free of fuss is the key.
The first recipe this week is chocolate marquise, a rich and decadent chocolate mousse named in honour of the 17th-century French aristocrat Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné, who was known for her love of chocolate.
The second dessert takes a little more preparation and planning but will repay you in spades. Rum baba is essentially a bread-meets-cake-style dough that is baked off before being soaked in a flavoursome syrup packed with rum, vanilla and aromatics.
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As the baba soaks in the syrup, it expands, ensuring every mouthful is moist and boozy. It’s classically glazed on the outside and split in half at the table. Here, it will be drizzled with more rum and finished with Chantilly cream. Its origins lie in Paris of the 1800s, where the original dough was inspired by the eastern European babka – a slightly sweetened yeast dough. I was lucky enough to try a magic version by Hélène Darroze at the Connaught Hotel in London a few years back. It was carved tableside just before a trolley arrived with more than 20 vintages of Armagnac from the chef’s family distillery in Roquefort in southwest France. This was the kind of cooking that reminds you why the French have such a long-standing and commanding position in the world of food.
This recipe has been adapted to make it as easy as possible to replicate at home. It’s certainly a project for the weekend but well worth the effort and theatre. I’ve served it with a little pineapple salsa and cream. If you’re out to impress, this is a showstopper.
