Clafoutis

Clafoutis is a dessert from Limousin, France, made by pouring a batter of milk and eggs over cherries and baking it. The batter sets as if enclosing each dark cherry, and there is no separate pastry crust underneath. The top and edges brown while moisture remains in the center, so you can enjoy the contrast between the fruit and the texture of the batter made with milk and eggs. The tradition of baking the cherries with their pits also reflects the idea of keeping aroma and juice inside the fruit.

Using Whole Cherries in Season

In Limousin, clafoutis is cherished as a home-baked dessert made in the season when cherries ripen. In the Creuse method, black cherries are arranged in a buttered dish, and the batter is gently poured over them. The fruit is not crushed and mixed into a cake; each cherry is kept whole, so you can enjoy the textures of both the milk-and-egg batter and the cherries.

Each household has its own way of making it: besides arranging the fruit in the dish first, there is also a method of combining the fruit with the batter and then transferring it to the dish. In Corrèze, the sweet, deep-red Burlat and the more tart griotte are also used in baked desserts, and even in the same milk-and-egg batter, they change the sweetness and acidity of the juice. Clafoutis is eaten either while still slightly warm or after cooling. The flour and eggs set with heat so the dessert holds its shape, while the milk-rich interior stays soft.

Making a Pourable Batter Without Lumps

The basic ingredients are flour, sugar, eggs, and milk, and some formulas add cream or butter. Combining the flour and sugar before adding the eggs, then pouring in the milk little by little to thin the batter, makes lumps of flour less likely. The batter is like a thick crêpe batter: cohesive, yet pourable.

It is not a cake that gains height from whipped egg whites. A batter high in moisture is heated in the dish, and the eggs and flour set the batter around the fruit. There is no separate bottom crust, and the edges and top bake directly, so the texture differs between the surface and the center. The width and depth of the dish also change how the heat penetrates, so the browning of the top and the state of the center are checked together.

A slice of clafoutis baked with cherries. The fruit remains within the batter. Photo: Popo le Chien, 2016-07-18, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the source; no additional processing.

Keeping the Pits for Aroma, or Removing Them for Easier Eating

In the traditional method, the cherries are baked without being pitted. The local recettes (the proportions of ingredients and the method) of Creuse and Corrèze value the aroma of the whole fruit. There is also the idea that using the fruit undamaged helps keep the juice inside each cherry.

On the other hand, some households find clafoutis easier to eat with the pits removed, and both approaches exist: keeping the pits and removing them. Pitting opens the fruit, which changes how the juice that runs out blends with the batter. With the traditional unpitted version, the pits are removed one by one while eating.

The Origin of the Name, a 19th-Century Record, and Regional Naming

Dictionaries link clafoutis to the regional word clafir, “to fill.” The dictionary of the Académie française also lists an even older related word, claufir, “to fasten with nails.” The name suggests the appearance of fruit packed tightly together, but who named it, and in what circumstances, is unknown.

The entry for clafouti in Count Jaubert’s “Glossary of Central French Dialects” (1856) describes a dessert made with roughly equal amounts of small black cherries and pourable batter, baked in a dish with a shallow rim. This 19th-century record also shows that it was a dessert in which summer’s black fruit filled a shallow dish.

Current dictionaries allow the name to be used for fruit flans, including those made with apples and other fruit, but in Corrèze, the cherry version is called clafoutis, while versions made with apples or pears are called flognarde. Although dictionaries use the word in a broad sense, households in Limousin continue to distinguish the names by fruit.

Far with Prunes and Cacou with Cherries

Brittany’s far breton is also a dessert in which a pourable batter of eggs, milk, and flour is baked in a dish. Its typical filling is dried prunes, which differ from fresh cherries in moisture and in the concentration of their sweetness. Even with a similar baking method, Limousin’s cherries and Brittany’s prunes are each ingredients that signify their own region.

In Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy, there is cacou, in which unpitted black cherries are baked in a similar batter. Made in the fruit’s season, this dessert is also tied to the activities of an association that preserves local food culture. Even desserts that look alike or use similar batters have their own regional names and ways of being passed down.

Glossary