This can label was purchased on eBay. What? A label written in Swedish for Cognac Babas made in San Anselmo by M. Bertauche? It is an interesting bit of San Anselmo’s history that a little research uncovered.
Maurice Emile Bertauche was born in 1903 in Courtenay, France. In a 1980 interview for the Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin Civic Center Library, Bertauche told of his early career as a hotel chef in France, his arrival in San Francisco and the establishment of his San Anselmo business.
At age 15, Bertauche went to Paris and quickly worked his way up the hierarchy of hotel kitchen positions. By the age of 18, he was the youngest maître d’ in Paris. He immigrated first to Vancouver, Canada before arriving in San Francisco in 1925 where he found employment as a cook at various establishments, including the San Francisco Golf Club, Olympic Club and Clift Hotel.
Maurice Bertauche, 1980. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room
Bertauche liked San Anselmo with its ideal climate and proximity to San Francisco, and he purchased a home at 26 Alder Avenue with his wife Sophia Brank. While continuing to work in San Francisco at Jack’s and The Three Musketeers, he excelled at making crepes suzette, the classic French dessert consisting of thin pancakes cooked in orange-infused butter until caramelized and then flambéed with liqueur at the table. They were so popular that Bertauche experimented at home and discovered a way to can crepes suzette without the loss of flavor. He moved out of his home kitchen and rented a small “hole-in-the-wall” on Tunstead Avenue across from the Library. From the small space, he turned out the crepes and rum babas, small yeast cakes saturated in rum, under his “Yolandaville” and “La Ville” labels and sold them worldwide.
In 1945, Bertauche purchased the lot at 145 Tunstead and built the one-story concrete building for $13,000 and moved manufacturing there. He also expanded his product line to include sauces and different flavored cakes.
La Ville Food Products Brochure
Bertauche distributed his merchandise all over the world with sales increasing by word of mouth with little advertising. In his interview he said, “My best sales were made in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and England. I used to sell them in Paris too…I even sold in Peru and Bolivia.”
By 1965, Bertauche’s La Ville Food Products had outgrown the Tunstead location, and the plant was moved to a much larger space in Northgate Industrial Park. Bertauche retired in the late 1970s, and the business was eventually dissolved. He died in 1993.
Bertauche offered this recipe in a 1963 Independent Journal article:
Use your prettiest serving dish, or an oval platter. Heap ice cream in center, ring with whipped cream. Then encircle with petit babas, or new coffee royals, the miniature baba with the coffee liqueur flavor. Decorate each baba with half a maraschino cherry. Bring platter to table to serve. For a dramatic finale to the dinner this dessert may be served flambé. Heat one cup of brandy, rum, or any liqueur, set aflame in container and ladle over ice cream.
Yummy!
Maurice Bertauche was a local success story; he put the town on the gourmet map and brought a “little bit of Paris” direct from San Anselmo to homes around the world.