[1] If you have stemmed dessert dishes or Champagne coupes, Cherries Jubilee is an opportunity to use them (photo © The Nibble).

[2] We like the orange zest used to garnish this version of Cherries Jubilee. Here’s the recipe (photo © Grand Baby Cakes).

[3] Queen Victoria ate Cherries Jubilee from a stemmed silver dish (a timbale), but you can use whatever dishes you like (photo © The Nibble).

[4] A classic chafing dish with flaming Cherries Jubilee (photo © The Nibble).

[5] At home, cherries are flambéed in a pan and spooned over dishes of ice cream. Here’s the recipe (photo © Claire Justine).

[6] A modern take on Cherries Jubilee, originally created by Escoffier for Queen Victoria. Here’s the recipe from Victoria Glavin (photo © Tiny New York Kitchen).

[7] Kirschwasser has many uses in recipes, but you can also relax with a snifter, enjoying the aroma and flavor of black cherries (photo © The Nibble).

Updated September 2026

September 24th is National Cherries Jubilee Day. Created for Queen Victoria, Cherries Jubilee is an easy, flambéed dessert that is presented with much fanfare.

A sauce is made from cooked, pitted cherries and Kirschwasser (Kirsch), a clear, unsweetened cherry brandy. Regular brandy can be substituted, as can cherry liqueur.

The sauce is flambéed in a chafing dish (or substitute) at the table, and ladled over dishes of vanilla ice cream.

It’s great entertainment for guests, many of whom have never had flambéed food.

And while the two main ingredients—cherries and Kirsch—may seem simple, together they create magic in a light dessert.

Below:

> The recipe for Cherries Jubilee.

> Different ways to flambé the sauce.

> The history of Cherries Jubilee.

> The history of flambéed food.

> More ways to use Kirschwasser.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The history of cherries.

> The different types of cherries.

> The year’s 15+ cherry holidays.

> The 100+ year’s dessert holidays, January-July.

> The year’s 80+ dessert holidays, August-December.
 
 
1. RECIPE: CHERRIES JUBILEE

If you don’t have Kirschwasser, you can use regular brandy or cherry liqueur. Cherry liqueur will give your sauce a sweeter cherry flavor (and you can cut back on the sugar if you like, since liqueurs contain substantial amounts of sugar), while plain brandy will mean less cherry flavor (but still delicious).
 
Ingredients For 6 Servings

• 1 can (16 ounces) best-quality pitted Bing cherries, or 16 ounce package frozen cherries
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon or orange juice
• Optional teaspoon lemon or orange zest
• 1/4 cup Kirschwasser or brandy
• 1 quart premium vanilla ice cream
• Optional garnish: 1/2 cup slivered almonds

 
Preparation

1. DRAIN the cherries, reserving the juice. (If you use frozen cherries, retain the thawed liquid.)

2. COMBINE sugar and cornstarch; mix in the juice, a little at a time. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sauce thickens, then add the cherries.

3. WARM the Kirschwasser or brandy in an attractive saucepan on the stove, or in the microwave in a microwave-safe dish.

4. BRING to the table with the ice cream, and ignite with a long kitchen match. Let flames burn out and ladle the sauce over the ice cream, scatter with the optional almonds, and serve immediately.

NOTE: Never pour liquor directly from the bottle near a flame. Measure it into a small cup first.

SEE Section 2 below on different pans to bring to the table to flame the sauce.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO USE A FLAME, the warm cherry sauce will taste just as good.

• Simply add the brandy and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes to remove some of the alcohol flavor.
• Flaming burns of much of the alcohol and leaves subtle notes of the Kirsch or brandy without the strong alcohol taste. It also adds flavor from caramelization.

Recipe Variations

• Serve the ice cream atop a slice of angel food cake, unfrosted chocolate cake (e.g., chocolate loaf cake), pound cake, or sponge cake.
• Some cooks add 1 to 2 teaspoons of almond extract or 2 tablespoons of orange juice, or a garnish with orange zest.
• You can also serve the sauce over custard or puddings. Cherries and chocolate pudding or lemon pudding are a delicious combination.

Preparation Tip

• Pre-scoop the ice cream into balls. Keep the balls in the coldest area of the freezer set on parchment or plastic wrap.
• Chill the dishes if you have room in the freezer (you can use the fridge if there’s no room in the freezer). Then, when you set the ice cream on the table and guests watch you flambé the sauce, the ice cream will stay nice and firm, and won’t melt under the warm sauce.

 
 
2. DIFFERENT WAYS TO FLAMBÉ THE SAUCE

Originally, in French dining service, a flambé pan over a spirit burner (a réchaud) was wheeled tableside, flambéed, and ladled atop the ice cream.

Here are modern alternatives, whether you want tableside drama or the safest, easiest kitchen method.

For Tableside Drama

The Electric Or Sterno Fondue Pot Or Induction Burner

• A fondue pot provides excellent heat retention and is designed specifically for tableside cooking.
• A portable induction burner or hot plate allows you to cook the entire dish right in front of your guests, using any regular pan.

The Skillet-to-Trivet Presentation

• Choose the right pan: an attractive, presentation-worthy pan such as an enameled cast-iron skillet (like Le Creuset), a stainless-steel sauté pan, or a copper skillet. Heavy cast iron is ideal because it retains heat long enough to keep the sauce bubbling off the burner.
• Prep the table: Place a sturdy, heatproof trivet or wooden board at the table, along with the pre-scooped bowls of ice cream, and a long-handled match or lighter.
• Cook on the stove: Make your cherry, sugar, cornstarch, and citrus base in the skillet on the stovetop until simmering and syrupy.
• Bring to the table: Remove the pan from the stove, carry it immediately to the table, and place it on the trivet.
• Add the warm liquor and ignite: Pour warm Kirschwasser or brandy over the sauce and ignite it immediately with a long match or barbecue lighter. Let the blue flame flicker out naturally (about 30–60 seconds), gently stir, and ladle over the ice cream.
• NOTE: We say it a second time, never pour liquor directly from the bottle near a flame. Measure it into a small cup first.

For The Easiest Presentation

This method has no drama, but it’s the easiest and safest way to create the dish, avoiding open flames near tablecloths and guests.

• Cook the cherry sauce in any saucepan or skillet on the stove.
• Turn off the burner or take the pan off the heat source. Pour in the liquor, return the pan to the heat, and ignite the vapors.
• Let the flame burn out while gently swirling the pan.
• Carry the warm pan to the table or simply assemble the entire dessert in the kitchen and bring out the finished dishes.

In the 1950s, Cherries Jubilee became the rage for home cooks like our mother, the hostess with the mostest. In those postwar years, flambéing was the hallmark of fine dining and home cooks were eager to impress at their dinner parties.

But the recipe was first served in a far more elevated venue than American dining rooms.

The legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier created the dish for Queen Victoria, either her Golden Jubilee of 1887 (the 50th year of a monarch’s reign) or her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 (the 60th year on the throne); sources disagree on which‡.

The “celebrity chef” was working at the Savoy Hotel in London at the time. Following its debut, Cherries Jubilee was a very fashionable dessert for many decades—far beyond England, including across the pond in the United States.

It soon joined the menus at restaurants of haute cuisine, where it was prepared tableside with great fanfare.

Pitted black cherries were flambéed with kirsch (which is cherry eau de vie, or unaged brandy) or regular brandy, then spooned into a stemmed silver dish of vanilla ice cream. (However, the vanilla ice cream may well have been a later addition. See the **ootnote below.)

You don’t need to have a stemmed silver dish—that kind of pomp faded in the 1960s.

Over time, cooks have substituted regular brandy and even rum. But it’s worth investing in a bottle of Kirsch: it has many other uses (see the *footnote below).

Good news for home cooks: You can serve this queenly dish at home, or “jubilee” any other cooked fruit using any 80-proof or overproof spirit. It’s an impressive yet easy-to-make dessert.

While Escoffier’s team pitted and cooked fresh cherries and made the ice cream from scratch, you can save time with canned cherries. We used Oregon Fruit Dark Sweet Cherries in Water, and have also used frozen cherries.

You can elect to flambé the dish or not. Tip: If guests ask to help, put them on flambé duty.

When you serve it to guests, tell them the Escoffier-Queen Victoria story.

We tend to make this recipe every year to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, February 22nd, traditionally a day for cherry desserts.

A recipe served to one head of state is certainly appropriate for another!
 

[10] This preparation uses halved cherries instead of whole ones (photo © The Nibble).
 
 
4. THE HISTORY OF FLAMBÉED FOOD

The word flambé comes from the French verb flamber, meaning to flame or singe. While lighting spirits on fire has roots stretching back centuries, the practice of flambéing as an intentional culinary technique and tableside performance emerged primarily in 19th-century Europe.

Pre-19th Century

Long before flambéing became a spectacle at refined restaurants, alcohol was used with fire for ritual and theater.

• Medieval and Renaissance Banquets: Medieval feast-masters loved spectacle and illusion food (entremets). Occasionally, spirits like aqua vitae were poured over roasted birds or boar heads and briefly ignited to produce dramatic blue flames as dishes entered the dining hall. (One the documented practice is a spirit-soaked cloth ignited in a bird’s beak or a boar’s head. At that stage, it was pure showmanship rather than a flavor technique.
• The British Flaming Pudding: In 18th- and 19th-century Britain, the tradition of pouring warmed brandy over rich steamed plum puddings and lighting it at Christmas became widespread. This served a practical purpose (warming the dense pudding and infusing flavor) as well as a celebratory, seasonal one.

The 19th Century: The Rise of Service au Guéridon

Some food terminology for starters:

• Service au guéridon is a fine-dining style where waitstaff prepare, cook, carve, or flambé food right at the diner’s table using a mobile trolley.
• Service à la russe, “service in the Russian style,” refers to a method of dining where food is brought to the table sequentially in separate courses rather than all at once.
• Prior to then, the traditional style of dining was service à la française (French service), when all the food or entire courses were brought to the table at once and arranged symmetrically in large, elaborate displays.

Flambéing in its modern culinary sense was born alongside classical French haute cuisine during the nineteenth century.

• Shift to Tableside Service: In the mid-1800s, European fine dining transitioned from service à la française (all dishes placed on the table at once) to service à la russe (courses served sequentially from carts or side tables, known as guéridons).
• The Role of the Chafing Dish†: The invention of portable, spirit-fueled chafing dishes widely enabled maître d’s and captains to sauté, finish sauces, carve meats, and ignite spirits directly in front of diners. The flame provided ambient lighting, warmth, and an intimate theatrical experience.

 
Several classic flambé dishes emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many with famous backstories:

• Crêpes Suzette (c. 1895): The most famous legend credits Henri Charpentier, then an apprentice waiter at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo. As Charpentier later told it, he accidentally set a pan of cordial-infused crêpes ablaze while preparing them for Edward VII (then Prince of Wales). Tasting the sauce, he realized the burnt-off alcohol left behind a smooth, caramelized citrus glaze. The prince loved it and suggested naming it after a young French girl in his entourage named Suzette. While culinary historians dispute Charpentier’s sole claim (Auguste Escoffier and other chefs had similar recipes recorded), the dessert solidified flambéing as an international luxury sensation.
• Cherries Jubilee (1887 or 1897‡): Master chef Auguste Escoffier created this dish to celebrate one of Queen Victoria’s jubileesQueen Victoria’s (Golden, 1887, or Diamond, 1897‡). Originally known simply as Cerises Jubilé, Escoffier poached sweet cherries in syrup, thickened them with arrowroot, and doused them in warm Kirschwasser before lighting the spirit at the table. See ***footnote below to see how they served the dish to the guests.
• Steak Diane (1930s–1950s): Reportedly named after the Roman goddess of the hunt, Steak Diane featured thinly pounded tenderloin steaks cooked tableside with shallots, mustard, Worcestershire, and butter, flambéed with cognac, and finished with cream. It gained prominence in luxury hotel dining rooms in London and New York, including the Drake Hotel and The Sherry-Netherland.
• Bananas Foster (1951): Created at Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans by chef Paul Blangé and owner Owen Brennan. Facing a surplus of bananas entering the city’s busy port, they paired sautéed bananas and brown sugar with dark rum and banana liqueur, lighting it tableside over vanilla ice cream. It remains one of America’s most recognizable flambéed desserts.

The Mid-Century Golden Era (1950s–1970s)

By the mid-20th century, tableside flambé was the ultimate hallmark of cosmopolitan dining. Steak houses, continental dining rooms, and supper clubs across North America and Europe routinely rolled out copper-plated guéridon carts to prepare:

• Bananas Foster and Crêpes Suzette for dessert.
• Duck à l’orange flamed with Grand Marnier.
• Coq au Vin ignited with Cognac.
• While not flamed at tableside, Polynesian tiki cocktails (such as bowls ignited with overproof rum in carved-out coconut shells) were brought to the table, flamed at the bar.

The Decline And Modern Resurgence Of Flambéed Foods

By the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of nouvelle cuisine shifted focus away from theatrical dining-room finishing toward kitchen-plated artistry, lighter sauces, and seasonal ingredients. Tableside service came to be viewed by some critics as dated, kitschy, or an unnecessary fire hazard.

Today, flambéing is appreciated for both its science and its nostalgic drama. The culinary chemistry:

• Chefs recognize that burning off ethanol can rapidly reduce harsh alcohol vapors while caramelizing sugars.
• It also creates distinctive aromatic compounds that gentle simmering alone often cannot replicate.

These days, high-end cocktail bars frequently use flambéed citrus oils or ignited overproof rinses, while classic restaurants and modern steakhouses have revitalized tableside cart service as an experiential counterpoint to casual dining.

Desserts: Black Forest Cake, chocolate fondue, fruit salads (especially with stone fruits and berries), ice cream (drizzle over chocolate, vanilla, and of course cherry, plus sorbets), and poached pears or fruit compote. Add to any chocolate dessert recipe, and to fruit tarts.

Cheese pairings: While cheese fondue is the classic, with kirsch traditionally added to the melted cheese, you can also serve a small glass with aged cheeses like Gruyère or Emmental.

Other recipes: Add to fruit preserves (even store-bought: just mix some into the jar) and sauces for duck, pork, or game. Kirsch is one of our favorite ways to deglaze a pan for a pan sauce.

**The Cherries Jubilee recipe published in A Guide To Modern Cookery by A. Escoffier (thee 1907 English translation) does not include ice cream. Here’s recipe #2566: “Stone some fine cherries; poach them in syrup, and set them in small silver timbales. Reduce the syrup and thicken it with a little arrowroot, diluted with cold water; allowing one table-spoonful of arrowroot per half-pint of syrup. Cover the cherries with the thickened syrup; pour a coffee-spoonful of heated Kirsch into each timbale, and set a light to each when serving.”

Picture the dining room when that dessert course arrived. In grand Victorian service—especially under Escoffier and César Ritz at the Savoy and Carlton Hotels—banquets operated with quasi-military discipline. Escoffier’s brigade de cuisine in the kitchen was mirrored in the front of the house by a massive phalanx of footmen, waiters, and commis. At state or royal dinners, there was often nearly one server for every two to four guests, or an entire team assigned to each table. Accounts of these high-Victorian dinners describe desserts like Cerises Jubilé being executed like synchronized stage magic:

The silver timbales arrived on trays, piping hot from the kitchen, pre-filled with the cherries and bubbling syrup. Footmen or captains placed a timbale in front of each guest in near unison. Almost simultaneously, servers walked the perimeter with long tapers or carried dishes already alight, lighting the warmed Kirsch immediately as the dining room chandeliers were dimmed. The alcohol flame from a coffee-spoonful of high-proof Kirsch only flickers for about 20 to 30 seconds. The dramatic effect was a brief sea of tiny blue flames illuminating the dark room—and because the silver timbales conduct and retain heat remarkably well, the cherries stayed hot enough to eat the moment the fire flickered out.

Still, the logistics, sheer staffing, and nerve required to pull that off for hundreds of aristocrats without setting a lace cuff, beard, or tablecloth on fire is staggering to imagine! It’s no wonder that mid-century hostesses and restaurants quickly switched to doing it in a single large chafing dish or skillet right at the table.

†A chafing dish is a serving pan designed to keep prepared food warm for an extended period. It typically consists of a water pan (bain-marie) that provides gentle, even heat; a food pan placed above the water; a lid to retain heat and moisture; a stand or frame it rests upon; and a heat source, traditionally a small fuel canister or candle (some modern versions use electricity). Tableside flambé uses a flambé pan over a spirit burner (a réchaud).

Raw food is not usually cooked in a chafing dish. Instead, it is cooked beforehand and kept warm in the chafing dish. You’ve no doubt seen them at buffets. Copper-clad dishes are traditionally associated with fine dining, with silver-plate considered an even higher level. Stainless steel or nickel silver (an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc that resembles silver but contains none) makes a fine presentation. On the low end, aluminum is an efficient heat conductor and more lightweight than the others.

‡Which jubilee: 1887 or 1897? While the year hasn’t been definitively established by culinary historians, here are some facts for you to consider. We know that the dish was created by Escoffier for one of Queen Victoria’s jubilees. Since he didn’t move to London to the Savoy Hotel until 1890, he wouldn’t have been in residence for the 1887 jubilee. This does rule out the specific claim that Escoffier created the dish at the Savoy for the 1887 Golden Jubilee.

However, Escoffier was already a prominent and highly respected chef in elite European culinary circles. So he theoretically could have created a Golden Jubilee (1887) dish elsewhere. Points to ponder:

> Escoffier + Savoy Hotel + Queen Victoria’s Jubilee points logically to the 1897 Diamond Jubilee.

> Escoffier + 1887 Golden Jubilee remains chronologically possible only if the dish was created somewhere other than the Savoy.

> The earliest known and cited Escoffier recipe appears in the 1903 Le Guide Culinaire, so that recipe does not conclusively establish where or precisely when he first served it.
 
 

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