For a moment, pretend you are a sperm whale. You feed on squid, but squids have sharp beaks. To protect your intestines, you secrete a substance called ambergris - a greasy, tar?black sludge that coats your innards. Now let's pretend you get sick, and for whatever reason, you cough up your ambergris, at which point it floats off into the ocean, to be seasoned by the surf and salt, until it washes up on a remote beach, smelling sweetly of the sea. This "vomit" - which is sought out by beach combers around the globe - could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Really.
Throughout history, ambergris has been used as an incense, to guard against the Black Plague, as a cigarette flavoring, and as a cure for the common cold. It was popularly used as a base in various perfumes and known for its distinct musky, warm, animalistic aroma.
You can also eat it, which is where I come in.
Reading about whale secretions is a charming activity, and once I learned about ambergris' history I obviously had to get some ambergris for myself. After emailing back and forth for a while with the surprisingly not?shady traders at a New Zealand ambergris website, my ambergris finally arrived in a teeny black velvet bag.
King Charles II's favorite food might have been eggs with ambergris, but eggs do not make for an interesting recipe. I instead decided to prepare a sort of gourmet hot chocolate.
Chocolate with ambergris was apparently a favorite drink of Madame d'Arestrel, superior of the Convent of the Visitation in Belley (no, I don't know either), though the recipe was later refined by a certain Antonin Careme, who cooked for British and Russian royalty. He took the chocolate/ambergris mixture and added cognac, cream, toasted almonds and honey to the mix.
Figuring that hot chocolate is small fry in the culinary world, I decided to wing it and not follow a recipe, which actually worked out surprisingly well. I used six ounces bittersweet chocolate, two cups cream, one cup skim milk, two tablespoons honey, four ounces cognac (I used Hennessy), one half cup toasted almonds and one gram of ambergris, for those keeping score. Combining the cream, milk chocolate and honey over a double boiler was easy enough, but to fully incorporate the flavor of the toasted almonds, I decided to add all the ingredients together and let my creation sit overnight.
And my god, it was glorious. Maybe it had something to do with the California spring air, my morning drive to beachside Santa Cruz, my reunion with an old friend or the simple fact that I never eat sweets in the morning, but this hot chocolate with Hennessy and ambergris business really was the perfect way to start the day. Even after I strained the toasted almonds from the drink, they left behind a delicious nutty flavor. Furthermore, there was just enough cognac in the drink to give it a kick, but without making it taste too alcoholic. Most importantly, the ambergris rounded things out. It was subtle, but added an extra note to the mix, mellowing out the bitter undertones of the chocolate and adding an additional earthy note to the cognac. If I hadn't been paying attention, it's possible I wouldn't have tasted it at all, but that was sort of the point. After all, ambergris is almost never something that is used on its own - it is used as an accent, and as a way of adding a contrast or a balance. Still, I would think about adding more if I were to make the recipe again.
Not too shabby for shipwrecked whale vomit.
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