The great bird's milk secret

Russians say that someone who is jaded and has it all lacks only ptichye moloko ("bird's milk"). The allusion is to the fact that there is no such thing in nature as the milk of a bird. So the notion of ptichye moloko in Russian folklore is associated with something luxurious, and, at the same time, ephemeral, subtle, volatile and unattainable.

Actually, after so many recipes published in this department, bird's milk seems to be about the only thing regular readers of this feature are missing (what with pelmeni, bliny, borsch, and many other traditional Russian recipes already taken care of). So we thought you would be interested in revisiting with us the short yet interesting history of this Russian dessert.

To begin with, the Ptichye moloko torte is a purely Russian invention. The inventor is Prague restaurant pastry Vladimir Guralnik, who comes from a family of pastry-chefs (his father worked in the Moskva hotel restaurant and his mother in the Budapest hotel restaurant). Vladimir has worked at the Prague restaurant since 1953.

Guralnik invented the now-famous Ptichye Moloko twenty years ago, in 1978. The tort was inspired by the famous chocolate candies of the same name. They were filled with a souffle and produced by the Red October candy factory. Yet, a tort had to be much bigger, so Guralnik had to come up with a new formula that would make it possible to bake a solid enough foundation, yet also obtain a lighter, white mass of souffle.

"It took us 3-4 months to get the right mass," Guralnik recalled.

In 1978, Guralnik's team at the Prague was baking 20-30 tortes a day. When the production process was perfected, daily output grew considerably – peaking at some 600 "bird's milks" a day, a ridiculously low figure even for the deficit-plagued Moscow of the early 1980s. Despite the rather expensive price by Soviet standards – R6.30 – Muscovites hungry for this light, sweet delicacy would stand in line first thing in the morning in front of the famous Kulinariya (Delicatessen) adjacent to the Prague restaurant on Stary Arbat street. The frenzy was such that special coupons were sold at 3 rubles apiece; these coupons would give you a place in the coveted line.

Needless to say, the "strong of this world" had better access to Ptichye moloko. "I did a 20 kg torte for Brezhnev for his 75th anniversary, Guralnik recalled, “an aide-de-camp of Brezhnev's son-in-law, Churbanov, came here to pick it up. And today we also bake it for celebrities. We gave a Ptichye Moloko to Russian pop star Alla Pugacheva when she gave a recent TV interview here at the Prague."

Of course, the 600 tortes satisfied just a puddle in the stormy ocean of Russian customers. Soon, Mosrestorantrest (Moscow Public Catering Service) spread Guralnik's recipe among the big hotel restaurants – the Ukraine, Budapest, Moskva – in order to satisfy skyrocketing demand. But even this addition was not enough. Later, some stolovayas and restaurants attached to Moscow railway stations also began baking the coveted tort with the elusive name, but they didn't remedy the situation much. "At the end of the day, they gave recipes to everybody,” Guralnik said, “and, in typical fashion, the recipe was no longer strictly observed."

Gradually, all Moscow (and beyond) began baking Ptichye Moloko and demand was somehow satisfied. But, in fact, demand for the real thing never decreased. For nobody knows the recipe like Vladimir Guralkin. In the 1990s, with the advance of the market different commercial structures, including small khlebokombinats (bakeries) started to imitate this torte, but the copies proved worse than the original. Bringing to heal this "pastry piracy" proved impossible, Guralnik admitted. The "train had already left the station,” he said, and his recipe was not patented. Guralnik does have a non-enforceable "authorship certificate" and, under Russian copyright legislation, this authorship certificate can now be turned into a patent. But, in practice, it is very hard to enforce this law.

"I can't do like Nike does with its pirates,” he said, “crack down on these false Ptichye Moloko makers and force them to destroy these false tortes."

Guralnik said it is easier for him to invent another tort recipe than to waste his precious creative energy on chasing culinary counterfeiters – Guralnik has some 30 recipes in his pastry-chef record.

Understandably, Vladimir is reluctant to unveil the secret formula of his torte to the wider public, so, in this respect, the torte still justifies its name. "It is very hard to bake it at home, because one of the components ("agar-agar" – a seaweed-based ingredient) is hard to come by, and the technology, in general, is very complicated. It is very difficult to determine the readiness of the syrup if it is not baked in industrial conditions. In short, there are too many nuances. We stopped issuing recipes long ago, so that people just don't get disenchanted with it, only to accuse us later of giving them the wrong recipe."

Yet, as he was touring the Prague's new pastry workshop, Guralnik raised the veil of secrecy, if only slightly.

"This is where you work on the syrup, using this famous agar-agar, then you whip the white of the egg... then you make it brew... and then you add the milk; the white of the egg grows 3-4 fold in size [this is how you obtain the famous souffle]. Then you boil the whole mass at a temperature of 80-90 degrees [Celcius]. And then it is poured in special forms, then you pour melted chocolate on top of it. And then put on top of the chocolate layer a special design."

The standard end product looks like a big rectangular mass of souffle, covered with chocolate, based on a sponge cake with sponge cake layers inside. The basic classic torte weighs 1 kilo, 300 grams and now costs 45 rubles ($7.30). The plus of this torte is that its formula allows the pastry-chef to bake different multi-layer cakes that can weigh 30 kg and up. His personal record is 100 kg.

In the end, Guralinik agrees to share tips on where to buy authentic Ptichye Moloko in Moscow: in the famous Kulinariya adjacent to the Prague restaurant (if you don't want the big torte, you can buy just a piece of torte) or at good restaurants like the Moskva. If you buy it in at a bakery, Guralnik said, you should look for the producer’s name – you can trust the Moscow-based Cheryomushkinsky kombinat. Another thing to look for is the famous, trademark firebird design on the cardboard packaging – a Ptichye Moloko in a plain white box is less counterfeit-proof.
Because of the biscuit and the souffle, Ptichye Moloko is high in calories, but much lighter than many creamier Russian cakes. This is a serious plus, and makes this elusive cake good for both solemn special occasions and for day-to-day consumption.