Mont Blanc

When chestnut is piped into fine strands and layered over white cream, the shape of a small mountain or nest appears. Mont Blanc means “white mountain” in French, and the Italian Monte Bianco is also a name for the same mountain. It was not, however, the small cake of today from the beginning. A dish of chestnut heaped on a plate, the Parisian pastry built on a meringue base and the Japanese cake made with yellow chestnut and a soft base differ in how chestnut, cream and base are combined and in the order in which they are layered.

Sieving chestnuts and adjusting firmness so the shape holds

When chestnuts cooked until soft are pressed through a sieve and pushed out through fine holes, the smooth purée becomes many fine strands. Dropping it from a colander onto a plate and winding it from a piping tip with small holes give different ways of arranging the fine chestnut strands. Unsweetened purée and marron cream cooked with sugar or vanilla differ in moisture and sweetness, so even to pipe them at the same thickness, each requires its own adjustment of firmness.

Some sweetened creams are products that make use of chestnuts broken during peeling. If lumps remain, they clog the holes; if the cream is too loose, it cannot hold its height. Sieving and adjusting firmness make it possible to pipe the chestnut into fine strands and to keep the shape in which it is arranged, like a wall or a covering.

The “chestnut nest” made with a jar, recorded in an 1863 recette

The “chestnut nest” in the August 31, 1863 issue of La Mode illustrée is specific even about how to use the tools. Fine sugar scented with vanilla is worked into boiled chestnuts, a jam jar is turned upside down on a plate, and the chestnut is dropped in fine strands from a coarse colander around it. The jar is removed, and the remaining hollow is filled with whipped cream. The chestnut forms the outer wall, and the white cream sits in the center.

There is also an account that the Paris pastry shop Dessat devised the confection in 1847, but it is not clear how chestnut and cream were combined in that confection. The 1863 “chestnut nest,” on the other hand, is a recette (a recipe giving the proportions of ingredients and the method) that records the steps for surrounding cream with finely extruded chestnut. Even before the name settled on Mont Blanc, confections combining finely extruded chestnut and white cream were being made.

An 1894 culinary dictionary introduced by a Swiss survey of food culture also describes extruding chestnuts cooked with vanilla and syrup to form a nest, filling it with Chantilly, and serving it with tartlets or meringues. Nest-like confections in which sweet chestnut surrounds cream also came to be made with baked tarts or meringues alongside.

Chestnut filled into a case and Mont Blanc arranged on a plate

The 1892 edition of Louis Maillard’s La cuisine des familles includes, as a vacherin made with chestnuts, a method of filling the inside of a case with alternating layers of finely piped chestnut and whipped cream. There is also a method of making the case from baked meringue, in which chestnut and cream are layered inside a baked case instead of being arranged directly on a plate. Confections in which chestnut is filled into a baked case were also made as a type of vacherin.

In the second edition of Escoffier’s Le Guide culinaire, the “chestnut Mont Blanc” is made by pushing chestnuts cooked in sweet vanilla milk through a sieve in fine strands and arranging them in a ring. After the mold is removed, sweet Chantilly is heaped high and irregularly in the center to represent the undulations of a mountain. Although the name is the same, this method represents a mountain on a plate without using a meringue base.

E. Seurre’s The New Practical Cookery Guide (1913) also sets the two side by side. “Mont Blanc” on page 440 places sweet chestnut purée in a timbale case and covers it with Chantilly to represent rocks. “Vacherin Suisse” on page 441 places sweet chestnut on meringue rings or a meringue base and puts Chantilly in the center. Within the same book, the chestnut confection placed in a case is called Mont Blanc, and the confection with chestnut placed on baked meringue is called Vacherin Suisse.

Angelina in Paris and the chestnut confections of Switzerland and Italy

Angelina’s meringue and chestnut cream

Angelina in Paris tops dry French meringue with Chantilly and covers it from above with strands of chestnut. In the recette that the shop says it has carried on since the early 20th century, the white part is hidden inside the chestnut, and at the bottom is a meringue base that crumbles crisply.

Two Rumpelmayers and the renaming to Angelina

This shop at 226 rue de Rivoli originally bore the name Rumpelmayer. In 1930, a plan was under way for a separate company named Rumpelmayer to open a tearoom at 9 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. This tearoom was a separate entity from René Rumpelmayer’s shop on the rue de Rivoli and was to use three levels: the basement and two floors above ground (the ground floor and the floor above it). On October 20, 1931, several hundred people gathered at a celebration of the new salon’s opening.

The Rivoli shop changed its name to Angelina in 1948. Florence, the shop’s public relations representative, also said in a 2012 interview that the renaming came after a separate shop with the same name had opened on the Saint-Honoré side. After a period when two shops shared the same name, the Rivoli shop carried on its Mont Blanc under the name Angelina.

Swiss vermicelles and Italian Montebianco

The Swiss Vermicelles, whose name means “thin noodles,” is also served as a plated winter dessert in which chestnut is extruded in fine strands, arranged in the shape of a nest and combined with tartlets, meringue or whipped cream. The Italian Montebianco uses chestnuts cooked in milk together with sugar, vanilla and alcohol, and some versions layer cocoa, rum and sponge with cream. Whether the chestnut is piped on the outside or placed in the base or inside changes how it is layered with the cream and the cake.

The Alsatian chestnut confection called a “stork’s nest”

Torche aux marrons means “chestnut torch,” but in Alsatian it is called Storichenescht, that is, “stork’s nest.” Simone Morgenthaler explains this name as a likening of the appearance of fine strands of chestnut placed on meringue, and notes that in Dossenheim it is called Käschtenescht, “chestnut nest,” and served at the village festival, the Messti. The appearance of finely piped chestnut has been likened not only to a snowy mountain but also to the nest of a familiar bird.

A France 3 Alsace program of May 18, 1996, which she records, featured Sister Marlyse, who loved her mother’s chestnut confection. The recette introduced layers cream and two baked meringues on a pâte sucrée base, then pipes chestnut around the sides and over the top. The cream is unsweetened, and a chestnut sauce containing honey is also made to be served separately. While the basic step of piping chestnut in fine strands is the same, this household combines a sweet tart pastry and meringue with unsweetened cream and a chestnut sauce containing honey.

Plated dishes introduced to Japan and the Mont Blanc of the 1930s

In Jun Okamoto’s 1898 Wasei Seiyō Ryōrihō Jizai, the “Piretemaron-a-ra-shanteré” is made by cooking sieved chestnuts with sugar, cooling them, heaping them high on a plate and decorating them with whipped cream. Although the combination of chestnut and dairy had been introduced, neither the name Mont Blanc nor a sponge base appears.

In Bunboku Yodan (1935), Kenkichi Ichishima recalls eating, at Colombin in Ginza, a chestnut confection that looked like wound strands of thin soba noodles, and asking its name. The June issue of Seika Jikken from the same year also includes a photograph of a “Mont Blanc” by Yoshirō Shiozawa of Beniya in Hongō. By the mid-1930s, confections from several shops were being introduced under this name, and it had spread not only as a plated dish but also as an individual pastry sold over the counter.

Mont Blanc, a Western-style confectionery in Jiyugaoka, says that it piped yellow chestnuts preserved in syrup (kanroni) onto a soft castella-style base and represented snow with meringue on top. What the shop aimed for was a confection that could be taken home, with a flavor familiar in Japan. It is said to have used yellow chestnuts for customers accustomed to the chestnut kanroni of the New Year, and to have sought a soft, moist texture for the base. Because the base is a cake developed from castella, the shop still calls it “castella,” not “sponge.”

It differs from the Parisian style, with brown chestnut paste and dry meringue at the bottom, in both the processing of the chestnut and the base. This yellow chestnut and soft base are a style that the shop presents as its own innovation. A story that it was “the first in Japan” is also known, but records of Mont Blanc from other shops before the war also survive, and in Japan, not only this shop but several confectioners were making Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc and Marron Chantilly in postwar Japan

A 1956 method and photograph from Izumiya

After the war, some pastry chefs went to Europe to study confectionery. Shinzō Hasebe of Izumiya in Azabu went to France in July 1952 to study Western confectionery, and a trade confectionery journal reported his return in January 1956. A later interview article states that he trained at Rumpelmayer, a renowned shop of the time, received the right to use its name (noren), and worked on Western confectionery as Rumpelmayer Izumiya.

In Hasebe’s “Paris-style fresh pastries” in the February 1956 issue of Seika Seipan, a Mont Blanc made with meringue dry-baked over low heat, marron purée and powdered sugar is explained. The frontispiece of the same issue also shows Hasebe’s Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc from Izumiya in Azabu, 1956. On a round brown base, broad bands are layered so that they fold back upward. Frontispiece of the February 1956 issue of Seika Seipan (Shinzō Hasebe); photographer unknown.

Among postwar Mont Blancs, some are built on sponge and some on meringue. Sponge absorbs moisture and softens, while baked meringue crumbles crisply. Even if the outside is the same mountain of chestnut, changing the base changes how it breaks apart in the mouth.

Lecomte’s style using meringue and biscuit

Lecomte in Roppongi, which opened in 1968, made a Mont Blanc that combined meringue and biscuit, layered with fresh cream and French chestnut cream. It was recreated by Susumu Shimada, who worked at the shop soon after it opened, when he was interviewed in later years. The biscuit is soaked with cognac syrup, combining the crisp bite of baked meringue and the aroma of liquor with the softness of chestnut and dairy. Unlike versions with a single layer of sponge and piped yellow chestnut, it combines soft cake and crisply crumbling meringue within one confection.

Tokyo Kaikan’s Marron Chantilly

The French marrons à la Chantilly refers directly to chestnuts and Chantilly and is a term also used for plated dishes. Tokyo Kaikan states that Kiyotaka Katsume, its first head pastry chef, adapted it for Japan around 1950 and devised the “Marron Chantilly.” The current item uses no baked cake as a base; chestnut heaped in a mountain shape is wrapped in white fresh cream. Even with the same combination of ingredients, its texture and presentation differ from those of Mont Blancs built on sponge or meringue.

Angelina in Japan, continuing since 1984

The Paris shop’s operations in Japan include Angelina in Ginza, from 1984. The operator’s 2024 announcement of the salon’s reopening explains that retail sales continued after the salon closed in 2016. Through retail sales and the salon, the Mont Blanc made with brown chestnut cream and dry meringue has also been carried on in Japan.

Yellow marron cream made with white bean paste, and each shop’s formula

At Lorian in Kanagawa, which opened in 1965 under the name Bunkadō, the yellow chestnut Mont Blanc was the shop’s most popular item. In the founder’s recollection, 500 or more were made on the busiest days, and cooking down the marron cream with added white bean paste (shiro-an) was hard work. His wife handled the work of wrapping them in gold paper, and the two of them finished them late into the night. Even with a formula that added white bean paste, cooking down the cream, wrapping and finishing a large number of items took a great deal of work.

For Toshiyasu Suzuki, who trained at La Seine in Sendai in the early 1970s, crème de marrons combining chestnut with white bean paste, cream and butter was a hit product that he found delicious at the time. He recalls that when he later recreated the same formula, he found it too sweet this time. Even with the same formula, the sweetness he had found delicious during his training and the sweetness he preferred in later years had changed.

The formula for yellow marron cream differs from shop to shop. Lala Yogashiten previously made a yellow Mont Blanc based on white bean paste and using chestnuts preserved in syrup. Yoshiaki Kikukawa, the third generation of the shop, said in a 2021 interview that because the earlier flavor also has regular customers, changing the product requires thinking of those customers. Some customers prefer the familiar flavor made with white bean paste, and whether to switch to a cream made by working chestnut alone is not something the shop can decide easily.

Drying meringue bases and measures against moisture migration

Using meringue as a base requires not only baking the foam until firm but also time to draw out the moisture inside. Kōichi Izumi of Asterisque in Tokyo adjusted the degree of baking so that the meringue’s sweetness would not come across too strongly when eaten with the chestnut, and arrived at a method of drying it overnight in a low-temperature oven. In Japan, many customers once disliked the sweetness of meringue, and the balance between sweetness and crispness is also an issue when choosing the base.

After drying, the pastry is assembled with moisture migration in mind. If moisture moves in from the fresh cream, the meringue softens. While there are methods of using chocolate or cocoa butter to make the base less permeable to moisture, Chef Terasaki of Pâtisserie Chocolaterie Récit recommends eating it within about 30 minutes to 1 hour of purchase, so as to enjoy the crispness of a base that is not moisture-proofed. Even with the same meringue base, the texture changes depending on drying, surface treatment and the time from assembly to eating.

Improvements in chestnut ingredients and piping tools in Paris and Tokyo

Angelina’s chestnut strands change through improvements in ingredients and tools, even without changing the formula. Sébastien Bauer, the chef in Paris, reviewed the marron paste after taking up his post in 2007 and chose an ingredient in which even the inner skin that works its way into the flesh of Italian chestnuts is removed by hand. The new item introduced on the Japanese side in 2010 also kept the formula of unsweetened fresh cream and meringue. The brown paste, too, uses chestnuts from which the inner skin has been carefully removed in this way.

François Simon, who visited the production site in Paris, wrote that a chestnut cream extruding device improved in Tokyo had replaced the manual piston in Paris as well. Bauer dried the base in order to add crispness, rather than layering something even softer onto the softness of chestnut and dairy. The Mont Blanc method that had traveled to Japan influenced production in Paris through improvements in piping equipment. What the two places shared was not only flavor but also the technique of piping many pastries uniformly in a single day.

Mont Blanc with chestnut piped in front of customers

In October 2019, the Kyoto magazine Leaf visited “Wa-guri Senmon Sawori” (a Japanese chestnut specialty shop) at Kiyamachi Takatsuji and featured the piping of Tamba chestnuts into strands about 1 millimeter thick. The character sha, meaning a thin silk gauze, used in the shop’s name evokes the many fine strands of chestnut squeezed out of the device. The shop not only pipes Tamba chestnuts to a fineness of about 1 millimeter but also shows that work right in front of customers.

Confections using chestnut mousse, and Mont Blancs in various places

There are also recettes in which the chestnut is made not into strands but into a mousse with gelatin and whipped cream, layered with sponge, with meringue as a decoration served separately. Confectionery supply retailers in Japan also offer versions that pipe sweet potato cream over a cupcake and custard, and others that layer pumpkin with cocoa sponge and mousse. The name Mont Blanc is used not only for chestnut but also for confections in which an ingredient is piped finely to cover the surface, with cake and cream layered.

A different Mont Blanc in Otaru likens cocoa sponge to rock faces, fresh cream to snow and shaved chocolate to rocks. Whether the chocolate is made into tubes or shaved thin and large also varies by shop. A local origin story is also told that it was made by imagining a mountain, without knowing of the trend in Tokyo. It is an example of a name associated with mountains taking root even without finely piped chestnut.

The lizi dangao (chestnut cake) of Kaisiling in Shanghai combines li rong, made from crushed fresh chestnuts, with cream. Yang Leilei, a bearer of its craft, says that a confection once tied to the harvest season became available year-round through improvements in processing. Founded in 1928, the shop is also a long-established business that adopted German-style confectionery techniques, and there is a lineage of chestnut confections that cannot be explained by direct transmission from Paris alone.

The confection of the same name in the French Antilles sandwiches coconut custard, rather than chestnut, in cake and is also covered on the outside with white coconut. Even when the name of a snowy mountain is the same, the order of chestnut, dairy and baked base is not uniform. The ingredients and methods of each region give rise to different compositions even in confections with the same name.

Glossary

Parade'sMont Blanc

The Mont Blanc from Cafe & Sweets Parade Kyoto, a pâtisserie in Fushimi-Momoyama, Kyoto, is made with care to bring out the natural qualities of its ingredients.

Its base combines our house-made puff pastry, baked until fragrant, with crème d’amande (almond cream) rich in almond flavor, giving it a crisp texture and a deep, rich taste. We designed this pairing of pastry and crème d’amande to bring out the flavor of the chestnuts layered on top. The star of the cake is the chestnut paste, which our pâtissiers carefully prepare in-house from chestnuts to make the most of their natural sweetness and aroma. We also add a layer of shibukawa-ni (chestnuts simmered with their inner skins on) as a textural accent, creating a contrast with the smooth chestnut paste. In every bite, the toasty aroma of the pastry, the richness of the almond and the full fragrance of the chestnut come together.

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