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Choux
Put four ounces of butter into half a pint of boiling water, with two table-spoonfuls of finely-sifted sugar, and a slat-spoonful of minced lemon-rind. Let the butter melt, then add, gradually, five ounces of fine flour. Stir the paste quickly till it leaves the sides of the saucepan. Draw it back, and let it cool, then stir four eggs into it, one at a time, with a pinch of salt, and a table-spoonful of orange-flower water. Beat it well until the paste is quite firm and smooth. Make the paste into small balls about the size of a walnut, put them on a floured tin, and bake in a slow and steady oven. Dry them before the fire, and make a little slit in the side to put jam, or cream, or iced coffee into: they should be quite crisp and hard when served. This pastry may be made into any shape, and it swells very much in baking. Time to bake the choux, about one hour. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.
This is standard pâte à choux, sweetened and perfumed, written before ovens had dials. The proportions are sound; the baking instructions are the part that needs translating.
- The measurementsHalf a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, about 1 fd cups. Four ounces of butter is one US stick; five ounces of flour is roughly a cup plus two tablespoons, best weighed. "A slat-spoonful" is almost certainly a printer's error for a saltspoonful, about fc teaspoon.
- The hinge: dry the paste, then cool itStir over heat until the dough pulls cleanly from the pan sides and films the bottom, then let it cool to warm before the eggs go in. Eggs added to scalding paste scramble, and the pastry will not rise.
- Eggs by feel, not by countFour eggs suits four ounces of butter to five of flour, but flour and egg sizes vary. Stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a slow, glossy V; the phrase "quite firm and smooth" in the original means stiff enough to hold a piped shape.
- Oven temperatureA slow steady oven for an hour gives a drier, flatter result than modern practice. Modern practice is a hot start, 425F for about 15 minutes to generate the steam that inflates the shells, then down to 350F for 20-25 minutes to set and dry them. Do not open the door during the first stage.
- "Dry them before the fire"This step exists because steam trapped inside collapses the shell as it cools. The modern equivalent is to pierce each bun and return it to a 300F oven, door propped ajar, for 10 minutes.
- Floured tinUse parchment instead. The original calls for a floured tin, but choux can grip and tear on a bare floured sheet.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, and still potent; a tablespoon in this quantity is assertive but authentic to the period. Reduce to a teaspoon if you want the lemon rind to read at all.
- Yield and fillingWalnut-sized balls give roughly 24 to 30 small buns. Fill only once fully cool and shortly before serving, or the shells soften. The "iced coffee" of the original most likely means a coffee-flavoured cream or icing rather than a cold drink.
Choux is French for cabbages, a name often said to come from the puffed, wrinkled look of the baked buns rather than any vegetable in the paste. The technique of cooking flour into boiling liquid and beating in eggs is generally traced to Italian pastry cooks working in sixteenth-century France, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the foundation pastes of the professional repertoire, the basis of f f f f f f, profiteroles, gougères and the croquembouche. It is taught as a method rather than a dish, and the closing note that "this pastry may be made into any shape" is the whole point of the lesson. The sugar, lemon rind and orange-flower water here mark it as the sweet version for a dessert dish; the savoury paste is the same thing without them.