Cla-fouted

Saucyman, What can you tell me about clafoutis? Cerises

As a word, clafoutis is easily hands down, the best kitchen term ever.

Kla-foo-tee. It is playful, singsong, the promise of something good - If Gershwin wrote a musical about pastries, we’d all be singing about Clafoutis rather than Summertime.

Even mispronouncing it in a Midwestern fashion, where each consonant is enunciated, CLaw-Foo-T-iS, makes the dessert sound prurient, suggestive or something best discussed only with medical professionals.

As a dessert, clafoutis is described in various cookbooks as a cake batter, pancake-like or analogous to pudding. I prefer James Peterson’s description of the whole enterprise being akin to a thick crepe. The mixture is poured over fruit, traditionally cherries and baked. A little powdered sugar on top, it should served warm, accompanied by brandy (Marc, Kirsch, or the brown varieties) or a coffee.

The dish hails from wooded lands of Limousin, France – an inland area east of the Bay of Biscay and Bordeaux and west of the nation’s culinary capitol, Lyon. Besides clafoutis, the other thing you really, really want from Limousin is its oak, which is notably sought after to age wine and brandy (in barrel form). Because none of Dumas’ heroes were sturdy Limousins and I have never seen a Juliette Binoche film set in the region, my cultural knowledge is limited. Reading tells me, Limousin is supposed to be cold, rural, wooded, mineral rich - as near as I can tell it is like the upper peninsula of Michigan, only in south central France.

Two divisive arguments with clafoutis. To pit or not the cherries and if you can or should use different kinds of fruit. For the most part, Saucyman is decidedly unlevitican about food, feeling there really shouldn’t be too many rules about eating and cooking. But if there were a golden rule in the Saucykitchens, it is that nothing should go on a serving plate if it is not edible. Pits come out. As someone who has spent more on dentistry than consumer electronics, this is an unquestionable assertion. To the argument that leaving pits intact as you bake them imparts a wonderful bitter almond flavor, well use a drop or two of almond extract or amaretto.

As for using other fruits, Julia Child lists 6 variations in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Heartier fruit like plums, apples and pears hold up better - berries make clafoutis seem like a big pancake. Once in a restaurant, I expectantly ordered fresh fig clafoutis, only to be disappointed with an $8 rubbery Fig Newton. While the size and texture of cherries work so well with the short baking time, cherry season is short and I am intrigued by the thought of a Thanksgiving time cranberry clafoutis.


The biggest issue with clafoutis is its simplicity. Like many simple things from the kitchen, it is a dish that people try to improve with fancier ingredients. And clafoutis doesn’t need to be the subject of Pimp My Dessert - where the peasant dish gets tricked out with chocolate, marzipan or organic wild strawberries and enough value is added so it be photographed for a feature in the NY Times Magazine. The sign of a good cook is not one who can make the fanciest things from the most expensive ingredients, it is one who can confidently serve simple foods: Flour, eggs, brandy, sugar, milk, salt and fruit - occasionally it is nice to have something be even easier than pie.