Frescati

01 / ABOUT THE DISH

About the dish

Frescati de Sète is a multi-layered pastry from the town of Sète, constructed from a sweet shortcrust base, a rum-soaked blond-raisin sponge cake, Italian meringue, and a coffee fondant glaze. Pastry makers in this coastal community adapted the grand-pâtisserie style around 1890 to satisfy wealthy merchants and elite clients, transforming the earlier Savarin-style frascati cake into a distinct regional specialty. Creating the dessert requires mixing flour, butter, sugar, an egg, and vanilla into a sweet dough, chilling it, rolling it into a thin disc, and baking it. A separate sponge cake batter is formed by whisking eggs, water, and sugar, then gently folding in flour and stiffly beaten egg whites, along with blond raisins previously macerated in rum, before baking. A glossy Italian meringue is whipped together using egg whites and a boiling sugar-glucose syrup heated to the soft-ball stage. The sweet dough disc serves as the foundation, followed by the rum-raisin sponge layer, and finally, the thick meringue is shaped and smoothed over the top. Once the egg white mixture sets, a heated glaze of fondant flavored with coffee extract is poured over the surface to create a shiny, smooth finish. Alternative versions replace the raisins with candied apricot or orange peel, substitute the coffee glaze with chocolate, caramel, or vanilla, or scale the large cylindrical dessert down into individual portions. The dense meringue and fondant coating successfully insulates the interior cake, allowing the entire dessert to remain stable outside of a refrigerator, a highly functional trait in the warm Mediterranean climate. The pastry is consumed at room temperature as an indulgent dessert course. For drinking, it is matched with a chilled Languedoc Muscat or a light, sweet white wine to complement the rum-soaked fruit and balance the heavy sugar of the meringue.