Japonais or Daquois?

[ChefPatrick]

I am a current student in the Patisserie and Baking program for Le Cordon Bleu, and I just have a question the can't seemed to be answered by any of our Chefs. Can someone please tell me the history of the word Japonais. I understand that it is a nut meringue, but why is it called Japonais, which is french for "Japanese", this item has nothing to do with the Japanese to my knowledge, please let me know! thank you!

Patrick

[Zukerig]

Patrick: Your inquisitiveness is admirable. When I studied for my diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu in 1986, the question of the etymology of the term “japonais” was not put forth in class discussion. As you’ve observed in your entry, the term means “in the Japanese style” – but that does little service to explaining the reason for using it to describe a cooked almond meringue! But japonaise also has a wider range of denotation in French cuisine: It can bear reference to such dishes as Crosnes du Japon (artichokes); Salade Japonaise (pineapple, tomato, and orange salad w/ cream & lemon juice); and Salade Francillon (mussels, potatoes marinated in wine, and truffles, bound w/ vinaigrette), likewise alternatively known as salade japonaise.

In the French pastry inventory, japonaise is used variously as an umbrella term for nut (using ground almonds or almond ‘flour’) meringues (including, e.g., dacquoise & free-standing discs), broyage, and succès (the classic meringue layer gâteau). But I’ve never seen the term applied in any way to a vacherin! “Japonaise” is described as a modern example of meringue in Alan Davidson’s The Oxford Companion to Food: “where ground almond is added to the egg white.” Very small meringues are called meringuettes or croquignoles.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, most dishes that are called à la japonaise, “have this in common, that Chinese (in French, called Japanese!) artichokes are included in the ingredients.” Larousse goes on to indicate that the term “is also applied to an iced bombe made of peach ice cream filled w/ tea-flavoured mousse.”

In The Professional Pastry Chef (2nd ed.), Bo Friberg provides a good introduction to meringues, albeit w/out tracing the root meaning of our term – he does supply a recipe for the batter and notes that “classic Japonaise are filled with hazelnut-flavoured buttercream.”

Like the term chinoiserie in architecture & design, used when referring to something influenced by Chinese tradition, the term japonaise may likewise refer to a Japanese culinary influence.

Two months ago, I made a Framboise-flavoured cheesecake layered between two rounds of japonaise meringue incorporating toasted almonds & hazelnuts finely ground w/ cornstarch & sugar.

You may like to read a somewhat meandering, and not entirely satisfying,
thread of discussion re japonaise.

[panini]

WOW! what a great reply. All I can add that any French mentor I had called just about anything with nuts in merengue that was more dried then baked as japonais

[Anneke]

French termionology predates political correctness. For example, they have a pastry called, well, let's just say it's the French version of the "n" word, yet it has no root in African culture. Names were chosen not for the origin or inspiration, but often because of what it reminded people of on the surface, given all the stereotypes of the time. If something was dark or had coconut in it, or both, it would be called Congolais. Same way the china cap or chinois got its name.

My guess is that japonaise was reminiscent of a shoji screen because it was light, opaque yet had a transparency to it and a crispness.

[Zukerig]

Anneke's shoji-screen speculation has some reasonable merit – but, I think it falls short of explicating why a meringue containing ground nuts should be so distinguished from other meringues as to resemble a fragile boudoir screen.

Consider the line of reasoning in my newest conjecture: Sharon Tyler Herbst in the Food Lovers’ Companion [2nd ed.], informs the reader that Chinese artichoke (aka Japanese artichoke, knotroot and chorogi) has a sweet nutty flavour. Ah, that may be the key to solving this mystery! As I mentioned in my previous entry, when French cookery indicates that a dish is to be prepared à la Japonaise, it means that ii generally would contain chorogi -- i.e., the Japanese artichoke. So, it seems that the internal cross-referencing is sound: a nutty flavour reminiscent of freshly prepared chorogi qualifies a meringue to be called Le Japonaise.

Incidentally, the manufacture of the first meringues was sometime during the 17th century; but scholars know little about the etymology of the word. A manuscript of this time mentions meringue made like a pastille of beaten egg whites, sugar, orange flowers, and musks. We can, with good reason, accept that the town of Meiringen played a logical role in christening the confection.