Crêpes Suzette

France's great flaming dessert: delicate crêpes folded in a butter sauce of orange juice, zest, and caramel, blazed tableside with Grand Marnier until blue flames dance over the copper pan: theatre and taste in equal measure

Origin: France

From the journey of Orange.

Crêpes Suzette is one of the most famous accidental inventions in culinary history. The most widely accepted origin story credits Henri Carpentier, then a 14-year-old assistant waiter at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo in 1895, who accidentally set alight a pan of crêpes being prepared for the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). Finding that the flaming sauce produced an extraordinarily good result, he served it to the Prince, who named the dish 'Suzette' after his dining companion. The story may be apocryphal (Escoffier's recipe books predate it), but the dish is real and the experience it provides is irreplaceable: the combination of the butter-orange sauce's fragrance, the blue shimmer of the Grand Marnier flames, and the sweetness of the caramelised sugar sauce reduces diners to silence. The orange sauce (butter, orange juice, orange zest, and caramel, finished with Cointreau or Grand Marnier) is the distillation of the orange's sweet, perfumed character into a sauce of extraordinary elegance.

Ingredients

Crêpe batter

125 g plain flour
2 large eggs
300 ml whole milk
30 g unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 pinch salt

Suzette sauce

100 g unsalted butter (for the Suzette sauce)
80 g caster sugar (for the Suzette sauce)
150 ml fresh orange juice (from 2 large oranges)
2 tsp fine orange zest (from the same oranges)
60 ml Grand Marnier or Cointreau (for the sauce and the flambé)

Method

Make the crêpe batter: blend or whisk the flour, eggs, milk, melted butter, sugar, and salt until completely smooth. Rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
Cook the crêpes in a lightly buttered non-stick pan over medium-high heat: pour about 60ml of batter into the hot pan, swirl to coat thinly, cook for 60–90 seconds until the edges curl and the underside is golden, flip and cook 30 seconds. Stack, covered, between sheets of baking paper. Makes about 12 crêpes.
Make the Suzette sauce: melt the butter in a wide sauté pan (ideally copper) over medium heat. Add the sugar and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves and begins to caramelise lightly to a pale amber.
Add the orange juice and zest. The caramel will seize briefly; continue stirring over heat until it dissolves into the orange juice. Simmer for 3 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon.
Fold each crêpe in half, then in half again (into quarters). Place the folded crêpes in the sauce one at a time, spooning sauce over them. They should overlap slightly in the pan, soaking up the orange butter.
Pour the Grand Marnier over the crêpes in the pan. Tilt the pan toward the flame (or use a long match) to ignite the alcohol. Swirl the pan gently as the blue flames die down. Serve immediately onto warm plates, spooning the caramelised sauce over each portion.

Notes

The Grand Marnier vs Cointreau question divides French chefs. Grand Marnier (made with cognac and bitter orange essence) gives a deeper, more complex flavour; Cointreau (made with sweet and bitter orange peels) gives a cleaner, brighter orange note. Both are correct and both produce excellent crêpes Suzette. The dish has also been prepared tableside in French restaurants for over a century, and the ceremony, the copper pan, the silver crêpe rack, the blue flames, is as much the point as the flavour. Henri Charpentier (the disputed inventor) claimed in his memoir that the Prince of Wales tasted one and said: 'This is the most delicious dessert I have ever eaten.' Whether true or not, the sentiment is correct.

The Gastrographer

Name: Crêpes Suzette
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: France
Ingredients: 125 g plain flour; 2 large eggs; 300 ml whole milk; 30 g unsalted butter, melted; 1 tbsp caster sugar; 1 pinch salt; 100 g unsalted butter (for the Suzette sauce); 80 g caster sugar (for the Suzette sauce); 150 ml fresh orange juice (from 2 large oranges); 2 tsp fine orange zest (from the same oranges); 60 ml Grand Marnier or Cointreau (for the sauce and the flambé)

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control