Desserts

Appears in

Published 2021

About

Introducing Marc Aumont

I love the simplicity of the Alsatian desserts (see the “Breads, Desserts, and Drinks” chapter starting). And although simple, the first dessert in the pages to follow—our version of the traditional Île Flotante and the Apple Tart a l’Alsacienne—can easily be made elegant enough to serve in a fine-dining restaurant. But I focus on the savory side at the restaurant and consider myself very lucky that chef Marc Aumont showed up when we were looking for a pastry chef to help us open the Modern. Marc had never worked in a restaurant before coming to the United States. For most of his life he worked at a bakery and chocolate shop in his hometown of Chamonix under his father, until he came to New York City in 2000.

You know right away when you’re going to work well with someone. We had tryouts with several chefs, each of whom made three or four desserts meant to impress us. Marc made twenty-three. In truth, after tastes of just a few dishes, you have a good sense of a pastry chef’s style and skill level, but his ambition and drive attracted us. We were from the same part of the world (Chamonix is a four-hour drive south from where I grew up). As it turned out, he lost his father when he was seventeen, the same age I lost my father. From this experience, I think we share a self-sufficiency and drive, which isn’t desirable, given the tragedy, but it can serve a chef well in the long run. He became the opening pastry chef of the Modern in 2004 and we’ve been together ever since.

Except for the Chocolate Île Flotante and Chilled White and Yellow Peach Soup, the desserts are all his (and his excellent pastry chef de cuisine, Priscilla Scaff-Mariani). Because of the precision required to make them successfully, we are only offering metric weights for the ingredients; it’s fine to convert to imperial weights, but we don’t recommend trying to make them using imperial volumes. Many rely on a few lesser-known ingredients. Trimoline and Cremodan, for example, are stabilizers for sorbets and ice creams that are used to keep the preparation smooth and creamy, preventing crystallization. You can buy them online or in a specialty food store.

Marc makes it a point not to mimic my food or make desserts that I would make. Dinner at Restaurant Gabriel Kreuther is a multi-course menu, so it lasts a couple of hours. And I love indulging guests in luxuries. But these can be heavy. So Chef Marc focuses on light desserts with dynamic flavors and varied textures. I hope you’ll see this for yourself.