HHeir to four generations of Alsatian bakers and pastry chefs, Pierre Hermé, 61, has established himself as the reformer of contemporary high pastry. A unique journey that he retraces in his book, All the flavors of life (Buchet Chastel, 2022).
“It happened to me again yesterday, at the Japanese Embassy. A stranger approached me: “Mr. Hermé, I love your macaroons, I love Mogador.” For reasons that escape me, when people talk to me about my macaroons, half the time, people talk to me about Mogador, this combination of flavors that mixes passion fruit and milk chocolate.
I have always given names to my cakes. Now, it’s become a bit of a game, I pick names at random from a book, a poem, an emotion… But, at the start, it was more to list them and register them over time. . It must be said that Mogador is not very young: I started working on it in 1988 or 1989! At that time, pairing chocolate with passion fruit was not so common. At Fauchon, where I was pastry chef, I had imagined a cake with a passion fruit mousse, a dark chocolate shortbread soaked in passion fruit. It was good, we sold it well. But, despite everything, I found that there was something dissonant, I stumbled on its slightly… metallic taste.
The solution, I found it ten years later, when I had founded my brand. I had the idea of switching from dark chocolate to milk: the passion fruit worked very well with a Jivara [chocolat au lait conçu par Valrhona] 39% cocoa. Another ten years later, around 2008, I had my bespoke milk chocolate created by Valrhona, with more character, more biscuit. There, finally, the balance seemed perfect to me.
Puffs hidden under the cream
It was also at this time that I started to reinterpret flavors in different forms: how to translate the balance of tastes of a Mogador macaroon in the form of a cake, a drink, a chocolate candy? People who don’t know my work sometimes tell me: “It’s a variation.” Never ! Because each time, there are different techniques and proportions, and even the ingredients can vary: there is rum in the baba Mogador, roasted pineapple in the cake. The only common denominator is taste. It’s actually memory work.
I wanted to tell you about the latest variation of Mogador, the Saint-Honoré pie. Because the Saint-Honoré is really the pastry cake par excellence. It calls on all the know-how in the field: puff pastry, choux pastry, caramelized sugar, ladle work [à douille, pour décorer les gâteaux avec de la crème]. But in its traditional form, with the thick edges and the crown of puffs, the tasting is not always easy… I prefer to treat it like a tart, hiding the puffs almost everywhere under the cream and with a homogeneous paste. This work on the form allows me not to get tired of the taste. »
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