Where Angel Delight Fears to Tread Fruit Fools Rush In

Only once has a dish been served to me in a restaurant that moved me to tears.

Even for a relatively well-adjusted and emotionally balanced chap I find this fact slightly embarrassing to admit, but there were extenuating circumstances.

It was the last day of my 30s, the milometer of my life was hours away from ticking over to hit 40, I was sitting in Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, one of the best restaurants in the world and, more importantly, I was sitting opposite a beautiful woman who a few months later was due to become my wife.

And she was also picking up the bill.

So… if ever I was allowed a tearful moment surely that was it. But these tears came out of nowhere, welling up from a deep part of my mind as my taste buds and brain connected, resulting in a jolt of food memory that left me blubbing like a little girl.

And the cause? A relatively simply desert of banana puree, with a little mango on a biscuit base and a soft set cream, a single course from part of the multi course tasting menu. What this sublime piece of cooking had done was, in an instant, catapult me back to being 5 years old, sitting next to my mother who had just given me a plate of mashed banana with top of the milk and a sprinkling of sugar. And, as any Freudian will tell you, there is nothing more likely to get a fella to shed a tear than childhood memories of his mother.

What has this got to do with Angel Delight?

Well, apart from mashed banana and top of the milk the only other desert that resonates so strongly from my childhood is Angel Delight and if a mere, all be it Michelin starred, recreation of one desert could have such an effect I was fascinated, if slightly alarmed, to find out what a taste of a long forgotten childhood delight might do. So I set out to retaste Angel Delight while fully expecting the possibility of a full-on mental breakdown.

Having tracked down three flavours; Butterscotch, Chocolate and Strawberry I was more than a little surprised how easy each were to make. 300ml’s of milk, quick whisk and then leave for 5 minutes. I remembered much more complexity from my childhood although that could have been down to the elaborate addition of some squirty tinned cream and a glace cherry. 

Classy… our house. 

Having whisked and waited the moment of truth came and, armed with a large box of Kleenex, the tasting began.

First up Butterscotch.

And… oh… it was horrible. Maybe I’d got the ‘complex’ cooking instructions wrong but it was rubbery and tasted faintly of furniture polish.

Next up chocolate; a better texture but none of the deep coco flavour that you would expect or want and a disturbing visual double for something our dog is known to produce.

Finally, and always my childhood favourite, Strawberry.

Despite the violent pink colour, this looked good, this looked like I remembered from my 70’s childhood. Long forgotten images and scents were beginning to surface; the smell of a space hopper on a hot summer day, the feeling of my Action Man’s ‘life like’ crew cut under my fingers, watching Ipswich Town winning the FA Cup (the one and only time I’ve ever shown any interest in football) and then I tasted the pink goo and, drum roll please, it tasted almost exactly like Strawberry doesn’t.

What a disappointment, what a let down, part of my childhood had died a little with the tasting of those convenience desserts and that would be enough to bring a tear to anyone’s eye. 


First printed in the excellent http://www.theretrocollective.com/