A Mont Blanc (or Mont-Blanc aux marrons) is a dessert of sweetened chestnut purée in the form of vermicelli, topped with whipped cream.

For a long time considered old-fashioned and heavy, it has become newly popular in the 2010s in a lighter form at trendy shops like Pierre Hermé, with many variations.

[1][2] A dessert with three distinctive characteristics of typical Mont Blanc: sweet, made of chestnut purée in the form of vermicelli served as a mount or a ring, and heaped with whipped cream, existed by the mid-19th century.

A manuscript from around 1460–1480 Libro de arte coquinaria, a cookbook authored by Martino da Como, has a recipe for chestnut pie (later called torta di castagne[7]).

[8][7] An early printed cookbook De honesta voluptate et valetudine by Bartolomeo Platina, published around 1475, contains the same recipe under the title torta ex castaneís.

[15] A sweet dessert of puréed chestnuts passed through a sieve to make vermicelli shapes—but without the characteristic whipped cream of the Mont Blanc—is referred to as (compote de) marrons en vermicelle in various French cookbooks starting in 1842.

It tells that once there was a patissier in Paris who created cakes called monts-blancs, made of chestnut purée and whipped cream; it came into fashion, but the fad soon went away.

[28] Mont Blanc made on a meringue base is described in an 1892 Swiss cookbook La cuisine des familles, as a kind of vacherin [fr] cake.

[29]: 384  Vacherin aux marrons is filled with chestnut vermicelli alternating with whipped cream;[29] another version uses a baked meringue as the base.

[29] Mont-Blanc aux marrons in Escoffier's Guide Culinaire in 1903 is a typical nid de marrons-styled recipe, with the advice to pile the whipped cream up irregularly to imitate a rugged mountain.

[52] At least by 1980, and as of 2015[update], Angelina's Mont Blanc consists of whipped cream on meringue base, then covered with layers of vermicelli of chestnut puree, and dusted with powdered sugar.

[67] The chestnut purée is generally formed into a ring or cone, with big dollops of whipped cream dropped irregularly into or onto the middle, to resemble snow.

[69] Traditional patisseries in Shanghai often have chestnut vermicelli cut into short pieces, and laid atop a base of sponge cake, the thickness of which may vary.

Such style is said to have been created by a German pastry chef at the city's first European patisserie, Kaisiling, and over time it has become a Shanghainese staple under the name "li zi dan gao" or chestnut cake.