How can ice cream survive a blistering hot oven? This episode unpacks the Baked Alaska, a dessert that has baffled diners for over a century, and reveals that its magic trick is really applied thermodynamics. Meringue packed with millions of tiny air bubbles acts like a spacecraft heat shield, while a sponge cake base insulates the frozen core from below.

We trace the dish from the 1867 Paris World’s Fair, where a Grand Hotel chef inspired by Benjamin Thompson’s research on egg whites misplaced Bavaria in Norway and named it the Norwegian Omelette, to Delmonico’s in New York, where the Alaska purchase inspired the name Alaska, Florida. Then we follow its fiery spin-offs and a 1969 experiment that turned the whole concept inside out.

• Why the low thermal conductivity of meringue and sponge cake keeps ice cream frozen in a hot oven
• How a French chef’s geography blunder gave Europe the Norwegian Omelette
• How Delmonico’s Alaska, Florida was shortened to Baked Alaska
• The flambeed Bombe Alaska and Hong Kong’s Flame on the Iceberg, from luxury hotels to cha chaan tengs
• Nicholas Kurti’s microwave-powered Frozen Florida, a reverse Baked Alaska with a hot liquor center