Ptichye Moloko

When the thin chocolate shell is broken, a light, white layer of foam appears. Ptichye moloko is a confection whose name means “bird’s milk” in Russian. It comes both as individual pieces, each coated in chocolate, and as a cake built with thick layers of the foam. Both owe their appeal to the contrast between a dark exterior and a pale interior.

Chilling and setting a whipped mixture

In one example of the cake, a cream of butter and condensed milk is combined with whipped egg whites and a syrup made by boiling sugar with agar. The air held in the egg whites creates lightness, the agar gives the chilled layer its shape, and the butter and condensed milk add a rich, milky flavor. When it is layered with baked cake layers and coated in chocolate, a thick white layer shows in the cut surface.

This layer is called a soufflé, but it differs from a soufflé that rises in the oven and is eaten hot: it is made by chilling and setting a whipped mixture. Some home versions use gelatin or fresh cream, and the mouthfeel changes with the formulation. In one household’s recipe, sour cream and whipped cream are set with gelatin and layered with a thin cocoa layer. This is an example made by chilling in a dish, using neither baked cake layers nor egg whites. Agar and gelatin both set liquids as they cool, but they differ in the temperatures at which they set and melt. Agar gels do not readily melt at mouth temperature, while gelatin gels melt at a temperature close to it. The actual texture of the soufflé depends not only on the gelling agent but also on the amounts of foam, fat and sugar.

Single-piece confections from Poland and Vladivostok

In Poland there is Ptasie Mleczko, whose name has the same meaning. In 1936, the Warsaw company E. Wedel launched a confection with a soft, foamy center covered in chocolate. The company’s history states that its owner, Jan Wedel, was inspired by a trip to France. It was originally vanilla-flavored, and flavors such as lemon and chocolate were added later. Wedel’s current vanilla version is made with milk and agar.

At a confectionery factory in Vladivostok, the “bird’s milk” confection is recorded in the annual report for 1967. The archives of Primorsky Krai credit the development of its recette (the formulation of ingredients and method of preparation) to the confectionery technologist Anna Chulkova. The factory has a history of producing agar since the 1930s, and agar obtained from seaweed was used in foam confections, jellies and similar sweets. According to the factory’s history, Chulkova used agar obtained from local seaweed and experimented with whipping methods and temperatures. One current example from the factory, sold under the name “Primorskie,” is made with butter, sweetened condensed milk, egg whites and agar, and flavored with vanilla, lemon or other flavorings. The single-piece confection shares ingredients with the foam layer of the cake, but formulations differ from product to product.

Turned into a cake at a Moscow restaurant

At the Moscow restaurant Praga, head pastry chef Vladimir Guralnik and his colleagues took inspiration from the single-piece confection and developed a large cake. Guralnik later said it took half a year to adjust the firmness of the soufflé. According to Guralnik’s recollection, they initially made trial batches of 20 to 30 cakes at a time, and customers holding purchase coupons lined up at the shop from early morning. Within about a year, they were making 500 to 600 cakes a day, and the cake is said to have spread to other restaurants as well.

Guralnik himself said the idea came in 1975, but other accounts cite trial production at the end of 1974 or the cake’s appearance in 1978, so the timing has not been settled. In 1980, an application for the cake’s production method was filed in the names of Guralnik, Margarita Golova and Nikolai Panfilov, and it was published in 1982. It describes a method of mixing an agar-containing sugar syrup into whipped egg whites, combining this with a cream of condensed milk and butter, and layering it onto cake layers.

“Bird’s milk” as a phrase for something rare

“Bird’s milk” is also an expression for something so rare it cannot be obtained. It appears in The Birds by the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes as something seldom obtained, alongside happiness and peace. In “The Cursed Prince,” included in a collection of Russian folktales, when a merchant’s daughter wishes for a meal in a mysterious palace, dishes and sweets instantly appear. The story describes that table as having everything except bird’s milk. However, how such old expressions came to be directly linked to the naming of the confection is not clear. The same curious name has remained with both the single piece, which holds a light foam inside chocolate, and the thick cake that is sliced to serve.

Glossary