Angelina, since 1903 · Since 1903
The Mont-Blanc
Angelina’s Mont-Blanc, a meringue base, whipped cream and a nest of chestnut cream vermicelli, has been sold on the rue de Rivoli since 1903 with the thick hot chocolate called L’Africain, and it remains the Paris tea-room dessert.
Taste profile
Pair it with
L’Africain, the house hot chocolate, or a cup of black tea.
Antoine Rumpelmayer opened the tea room on the rue de Rivoli in 1903 and named it after his daughter-in-law; Proust and Coco Chanel took tea under its Belle Époque ceiling. The Mont-Blanc, named after the mountain and shaped like it, is a crisp meringue, a heart of whipped cream and a mound of sweetened chestnut purée pressed through a fine nozzle into vermicelli, dusted like snow.
Angelina makes tens of thousands a year, sells a smaller “Mont-Blanc à emporter” at the counter and pairs it with L’Africain, a hot chocolate so thick it is served with a jug of whipped cream.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 3 egg whites, 90 g sugar, 90 g icing sugar for the meringue
- 300 ml whipping cream, 20 g icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla
- 400 g sweetened chestnut purée (crème de marrons)
- 100 g unsweetened chestnut purée
- 30 g butter
- 1 tbsp dark rum
- Icing sugar for dusting
Method
- Whisk the whites, add the sugar gradually, fold in the icing sugar, pipe six domes and bake at 100 °C for 90 minutes. Cool.
- Whip the cream with icing sugar and vanilla.
- Beat both chestnut purées with the butter and rum until smooth; pass through a sieve if needed.
- Pipe a mound of whipped cream on each meringue.
- Press the chestnut cream through a fine multi-hole nozzle over the cream in a nest, dust with icing sugar.
Where to taste it
