Le Russe

Praline cream is sandwiched between thin layers of nut sponge, and the top is dusted white with icing sugar. Le Russe, the signature cake of Maison Artigarrède in Oloron-Sainte-Marie in southwestern France, is made of soft stacked layers and cut into squares. The shop’s version holds the cream between two thin layers of sponge. Published recettes (ingredient proportions and methods) also include a three-layer version, which differs in the number of layers and the thickness of the cream.

Thin Nut Sponge and Praline Buttercream

Sponge of this type is made by bringing together almond and hazelnut flours, icing sugar and wheat flour with milk, folding in whipped egg whites, and baking it thin. Compared with a dry meringue disc, it keeps more softness. Together with butter, milk and eggs, two kinds of nuts create the flavor.

The version that the culinary expert Mercotte presents, based on Yves Thuriès’s formula, has three layers. For the praline, roasted nuts are combined with hot sugar syrup, first forming white, gritty crystals, and are then heated further until they turn into brown caramel. When this is cooled, crushed and ground continuously, the oil in the nuts turns the powder into a paste. The order in which the aroma is developed differs from simply mixing crushed nuts into butter.

Hot syrup is poured onto egg yolks and whisked until cool, then softened butter is added and the praline is mixed in. Sponge and cream are placed alternately in a frame, pressed lightly to even out the thickness, chilled, trimmed around the edges, and finished with icing sugar. Trimming after chilling gives straight edges, but before eating, the cake is brought back toward room temperature for a little while to soften butter that has become hard from over-chilling.

Differences in the Number of Sponge Layers and How the Cream Is Aerated

Artigarrède’s two layers and the three layers based on Thuriès are not necessarily the same in thickness, proportion of cream, or even texture. The pastry maker Jean-Claude Montauriol also publishes a two-layer version, made by combining Italian meringue with praline butter so that the egg-white foam incorporates air. Among the Russes made widely, the mouthfeel changes depending on whether the cream uses egg yolks or has egg-white foam added, and on how many layers of sponge are stacked. There are also differences between the “Russe d’Artigarrède” handed down by the shop and these published recettes.

From the Oloron Workshop to Beyond the Town

Adrien and Élise Artigarrède opened their shop in 1923, selling cakes suited to family tables on weekends. Customers began to come from Béarn and from the neighboring Basque Country, and in 1930 the shop moved in front of Sainte-Marie Cathedral. The later workshop was set up on the site where Adrien had kept chickens and cows to obtain ingredients.

In 1969 Élise and her daughter Odette took over the shop, and from 1988 the grandson Jean-Paul and his wife Nadine expanded sales to Pau. In the 2000s, Michel of the fourth generation also joined, and the cakes came to be sold in Tarbes and Saint-Jean-de-Luz as well. Even so, production is concentrated in the Oloron workshop. Although sales spread beyond the town, the production base remained in Oloron.

Oloron-Sainte-Marie and Sainte-Marie Cathedral. The Artigarrède shop moved in front of the cathedral in 1930. 2007. Photo: Jean Michel Etchecolonea / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Legends of a Russian Princess and Prisoners, and the Crimean Almond Theory

Russe means “Russian” in French. According to the story handed down at Artigarrède, in the winter of 1923 a Russian princess in exile was unable to continue on to Spain because of snow and, in thanks for the hospitality she received, passed on the secret of making the cake. The white icing sugar on top is likened to the snowfields of Russia and the peaks of the Pyrenees. This legend, passed down by the shop, links the cake’s white surface to a snowy landscape.

Montauriol separately lists a story that Russian prisoners who came to Oloron gave the recette, and a theory that the name comes from almonds imported from Crimea. However, he himself questions explaining the name by the almonds’ origin alone, since almonds were also grown in southern France. The prisoners and the princess are handed down as separate storylines, and doubts also remain about the explanation that ties the name to where the almonds came from.

Similarities and Differences with the Castel and the Misérable

Montauriol also cites Jean-Marie Claverie’s “Russe du Vic-Bilh” in Lembeye as an earlier cake of the same name. The name of a white nut cake has survived not only at the Oloron shop but in another town as well.

For the castel, which is similar in structure, there is a recette by Assia, who shares Algerian home baking, in which buttercream is sandwiched between layers of almond sponge. She describes it as a cake close to the Russe and the Belgian misérable. Meanwhile, the castel of the Hess family of Château-Thierry has a family history in which Léon Hess won a gold medal at a culinary competition in Paris in 1912 and named the cake in tribute to the town.

All of them layer thin sponge containing nuts with cream, but the ingredients and mouthfeel differ from shop to shop and home to home, for example in whether praline is used and whether egg yolks or egg whites are added.

Glossary