Le Meurice, Cédric Grolet · Since 2015
The sculpted fruit
A thin shell of coloured cocoa butter and white chocolate shaped like the fruit, a mousse of the same fruit inside and a compote at the heart: Cédric Grolet’s trompe-l’œil made the pastry chef a global name.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A cup of Darjeeling first flush, or a glass of dry champagne if it is a celebration.
The fruit appeared on the tea menu of Le Meurice around 2015 and spread through social media faster than any dessert before it. The technique is a mould: a shell of white chocolate sprayed with coloured cocoa butter, textured like a lemon’s skin or a hazelnut’s shell, filled with a light mousse and a compote of the real fruit, sometimes with a biscuit base. The trick is that it tastes more of the fruit than the fruit does.
Grolet has made dozens: lemon, apple, hazelnut, strawberry, mango, chestnut, a walnut, a fig. The pieces are limited per person at the counters and the fruit of the season is announced on the boutique’s feed. A lemon costs around the price of a lunch, and people fly in for it.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 4 organic lemons (zest and juice)
- 3 eggs
- 120 g sugar
- 120 g butter
- 2 sheets of gelatine
- 200 ml whipping cream
- 150 g white chocolate
- Yellow cocoa butter colour (optional)
Method
- Make a lemon cream: whisk eggs, sugar, lemon juice and zest over a bain-marie until thick, then beat in the butter. Chill.
- Soften the gelatine, melt into a third of the warm lemon cream, fold in the whipped cream for a mousse.
- Fill silicone half-sphere moulds with mousse, drop a spoon of thick lemon cream in the centre, freeze.
- Melt the white chocolate, colour it yellow if you have cocoa butter colour, and dip or brush the frozen domes for a thin shell.
- Join two domes with a little chocolate, texture the surface with a toothbrush of yellow colour and thaw two hours in the fridge.
Where to taste it
The original The sculpted fruit
HotelParis · Rue de Rivoli
Le Meurice
Where the fruit is sculpted
Hotel patisserieParis · Le Meurice
La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cédric Grolet
The counter with the queue
BoutiqueParis · Avenue de l’Opéra, 2e
Cédric Grolet Opéra
The croissants and the flowers
Hotel patisserieLondon · Knightsbridge
Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley
The fruit lands in Knightsbridge
BoutiqueSingapore · COMO Orchard, Orchard Road
Cédric Grolet Singapore
Sculpted fruit under the equator
