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Boston Cream Cakes
Put half a pint of water into a saucepan, add four ounces of butter, and bring slowly to the boil; then stir in gradually half a pound of flour, beating well. Let it boil a couple of minutes, then turn out until cool, when the yolks of six eggs should be beaten in, and finally the whites, whisked to a stiff froth. This must be dropped from a dessert-spoon upon sheets of greased paper, laid upon a tin, and placed in a hot oven. When baked, slit each on one side with a sharp knife, and fill with cornflour blancmange, made in the usual way, but with extra sugar. A little vanilla flavouring is a great improvement. These should be used while quite fresh.
This is choux paste under an older name, and the method is sound apart from the oven instructions, which need numbers. The filling is a cornstarch blancmange rather than a custard, so it sets firm enough to hold inside a split bun.
- The hinge: dry the paste, then cool itBoiling the flour paste "a couple of minutes" is what drives off water and lets the shells rise hollow; the paste should come away from the pan in a smooth ball. Turning it out to cool matters just as much, since yolks added to hot paste scramble.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups. With 4 oz butter and 8 oz flour this gives a fairly stiff paste, which is correct for spooned puffs.
- Six eggsEggs of the period may have run smaller than modern large ones. Beat in the yolks first, then fold in the whisked whites, stopping when the paste is thick and glossy; you may not need all six.
- "A hot oven"Start at 425F for about 15 minutes to get the lift, then drop to 350F for another 20 to 25 minutes until the shells are deep gold and light. Opening the door early collapses them.
- Greased paper on a tinParchment on a sheet pan needs no greasing. Space the spoonfuls well apart, as they roughly double.
- Cornflour blancmangeCornflour is cornstarch. "Made in the usual way" means about 1 1/2 oz cornstarch slaked in cold milk, stirred into a pint of hot milk with sugar and cooked until thick, then cooled with the surface covered. The recipe's call for extra sugar and vanilla is worth following.
- Split while warm, fill when coldSlitting the shells hot lets steam escape so they stay crisp, but the blancmange must be fully cold or it will soak the pastry.
- Yield and keepingYield depends on the size of the spoonfuls. The instruction to use them fresh is literal: filled choux soften within a few hours, and anything with a milk filling should be refrigerated and eaten the same day.
"Boston cream cakes" was one nineteenth-century American name for filled choux buns, and the name also turns up in British compendia of the period. The name shares its logic with Boston cream pie: in both, "cream" means a thick cooked filling rather than whipped dairy, and here it is not even a custard but a cornstarch blancmange, cheaper and firmer than an egg custard. Cornstarch became widely available to home cooks over the second half of the century, and its use as a filling thickener suits the period. The pastry itself is much older; it is usually traced to Italian and then French court kitchens, though that account is traditional rather than firmly documented, and it reached English cookery books as "choux" or "cream cake" paste well before this book appeared.