Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
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noun
A dessert consisting of ice cream encased in cake and meringue and briefly baked.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: Alaska//alaska
Antonyms: none provided
noun
cake covered with ice cream and meringue browned quickly in an oven
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: dessert, sweet, afters
History
Said to have been coined by Charles Ranhofer (1836–1899), the French-American chef de cuisine of Delmonico’s, a restaurant in New York City, New York, United States, to mark the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire on 30 March 1867. However, there is no contemporary report of this fact, and in his book The Epicurean (1894) Ranhofer referred to the dish, versions of which pre-dated the Alaska Purchase, as an “Alaska, Florida”, apparently because of the contrast between its cold and hot elements. The dish appears to have been first called an Alaska or baked Alaska some time after the Alaska Purchase.
Across languages
14 source translations are retained for this English entry.
