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The layered cake generally known as Death by Chocolate debuted as a particular in 1982 on the Trellis, a elegant American restaurant in Williamsburg, Va., and constructed a cult following lengthy earlier than a dessert may discover instantaneous fame on social media.
It’s value noting that these have been fairly bizarre occasions for chocolate. Its pleasure was distorted, usually framed within the tradition as a monstrous, female temptation to be punished with the manic repentance of a “Cathy” cartoon. But the chef Marcel Desaulniers, who died final month at 78, was much less curious about guilt than within the sheer pleasure of extravagance.
That was his mission with Death by Chocolate, which he developed with the pastry chef Donald Mack. It was an architectural surprise that loomed 10 inches tall and weighed greater than 10 kilos. At a time when each critical restaurant had its lavish, layered chocolate dessert, this one stood out. Slice by slice, phrase unfold, and the kitchen was quickly assembling as many as 16 muffins a day to maintain up with demand.
Within months of its debut, folks calling the Trellis to make reservations have been checking with the host to see if Death by Chocolate would undoubtedly be obtainable as a result of, look, a few of them have been touring very far for a style of this factor. Diners requested for the recipe, altering their minds once they realized it was in actual fact a number of subrecipes that got here collectively in a multiday course of. This was the definition of a special-occasion cake. It acquired fan mail.
The success of Death by Chocolate introduced Mr. Desaulniers nationwide consideration, and he met the second, giving himself the goofy nickname “the guru of ganache.” He wrote 10 cookbooks (eight of them on the chocolate beat), starred in two cooking reveals (one about chocolate), taught cooking lessons and made numerous appearances on nationwide tv.
The phrase Death by Chocolate quickly entered the American vernacular as a shorthand for over-the-top, winky-faced, better-than-sex, chocolate-flavored anythings. Bennigan’s registered the trademark in 1986.
Mr. Desaulniers mentioned the identify got here to him from an article in Gourmet journal, the place the author described a dense, single-layer French chocolate cake referred to as “mourir de chocolat,” or dying of chocolate. I think about Mr. Desaulniers elevating his eyebrows: You name that Death by Chocolate? Ha! I’ll present you Death by Chocolate!
Growing up in a second-generation French Canadian household in Woonsocket, R.I., Mr. Desaulniers loved few treats other than the occasional chocolate bar and his mom’s home-baked cookies. His father, who died when Mr. Desaulniers was about 10, ran a dry-cleaning enterprise.
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1965, Mr. Desaulniers was drafted. Stationed in Vietnam as a Marine, subsisting on chilly canned ham and turkey loaf, he spent his time daydreaming about meals — notably sweets. “I might fantasize about Rabelaisian romps by way of swimming pools of heat chocolate sauce,” he wrote in his 1992 cookbook “Death by Chocolate.”
Book chapters and dishes with titles like “chocolate dementia” and “chocolate phantasmagoria” have been a bit a lot, even then, however they have been additionally the expression of a person who by no means underestimated the highly effective, if fleeting, happiness of a well-timed candy. At the Trellis, one among Mr. Desaulniers’s favourite strikes was what he referred to as “the panoply,” stunning a desk with a big tray that held one among each dessert on the menu.
At 12, I used to be dwelling in rural France and had by no means been to the United States, however Mr. Desaulniers’s guide “Desserts to Die For” was a present from a household buddy who knew that I cherished to review out-of-my-league recipes. I made his very ’90s “chocolate resurrection” — particular person fondant muffins topped with caramel baskets holding contemporary raspberries. The caramel was too cool once I flicked it, which meant it was too thick, and I overcooked the muffins by a minute, which dried them out, however the recipe had been a superb information, even instructing me find out how to take away caramel from the pan. (Add water, boil it.)
Death by Chocolate was extra intimidating, and the recipe in “The Trellis Cookbook” (1988) didn’t embody a picture. “A good warning should be issued that it is a time- and money-consuming recipe,” Mr. Desaulniers wrote within the postscript, which additionally gave a suggestion for find out how to break down the steps into three manageable cooking days.
Why undergo all this hassle? Before opening the Trellis, Mr. Desaulniers had spent years promoting industrial cake mixes and pie fillings to establishments; cooking from scratch, usually with regional elements from Virginia, was some extent of delight.
Death by Chocolate concerned cooking a disk of cocoa meringue; a chocolate mousse; a second, barely completely different chocolate mousse infused with coffee; a buttery chocolate ganache; a brownie layer to slice horizontally; and a chocolate-rum sauce.
Temperatures and textures needed to be simply so for the cake to come back along with structural integrity. Two completely different nozzles have been required for the piping. Directions have been prolonged however exact, proper right down to find out how to lower the cake with a serrated knife run beneath sizzling water. You acquired the sense that Mr. Desaulniers actually wished you to get it proper.
I by no means tried Death by Chocolate, however rereading the recipe I felt a deep appreciation for its depth and dedication — notably now, when pastry kitchens are sometimes thought of nonessential bills even at “good” eating places, the place a dessert menu would possibly comprise little greater than a very gelatinized panna cotta and a scoop of mediocre ice cream.
I additionally puzzled if this chocolate cake that did probably the most may crack the algorithm of our collective meals obsessions now. If it debuted in 2024, wouldn’t it be simply one other particular, right here one week, gone the subsequent? After all, Death by Chocolate wasn’t constructed for the digicam, however for the attention.
Knowing this, in 1982, Mr. Desaulniers employed a foolproof technique. He merely walked a cake across the eating room, hoping diners would discover.
Of course they seen. Everyone turned to see it, glamorous and gleaming, beneath a defend of rosettes. Ooh, what’s that, they requested their servers. The drama of the identify should have helped. Mr. Desaulniers didn’t must do the rest: Death By Chocolate referred to as out to be sliced.
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