National Baked Alaska Day Date in the current year: February 1, 2024

Baked Alaska, also known as Bombe Alaska, is a great combination of ice cream, sponge cake and meringue baked in an extremely hot oven. Although the meringue is hot, the ice cream in the middle of dessert remains cold even after baking. No magic, just physics.

The first attempts to combine cake and ice cream date back to the times of Renaissance: bakers topped already baked cakes with whipped ice cream. The Chinese were the first who managed to bake pastry over an ice cream filling, which resulted in a delicious combination of cold ice cream filling and hot cake. Paris chefs became acquainted with the dessert in the 19th century, and so the history of the Baked Alaska we know and love today began.

American-born English physicist Benjamin Thompson made the last contribution to Baked Alaska. He studied the heat resistance of beaten egg whites and realized that they were a great insulator. The chef of the Grand Hôtel in Paris used Thompson's discovery to create a meringue dessert he called omelette norvégienne (Norwegian omelette; Thompson lived in Bavaria at the time, and the chef mistakenly thought it was in Norway).

Now we have to answer the last question: who made the first Baked Alaska? The original recipe belongs to Delmonico’s, a restaurant in New York City. Its chef made this dessert in honor of the newly acquired Alaska territory in 1876.