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Cream Eclairs
Put two ounces of sugar and two ounces of butter into a stewpan with a quarter of a pint of water. Bring it gently to the boil, and mix in very gradually four ounces of sifted flour. Cook slowly for ten minutes, stirring all the time, until the paste begins to be firm. Remove from the fire, and add three eggs, one at a time, mixing each thoroughly before adding the next. Flavour with a few drops of vanilla essence. Make into balls, brush them over with a little beaten egg and milk, place them in a moderate oven, and bake to a light fawn colour. The eclairs should rise rapidly, and when cooled should be quite hollow inside. Make a small hole in the centre of each, and fill it with sweetened cream put in through a funnel. Decorate with powdered cochineal or little strips of angelica. Probable cost, 1s. for twelve.
This is standard choux paste (pâte à choux) with a few Victorian habits that modern practice has revised. The hinge is the eggs: the paste must cool from boiling before they go in, or they scramble and the eclairs will not rise.
- The measurementsA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, about 140-150 ml. Two ounces of sugar and butter is 55 g each, four ounces of flour 115 g. Two ounces of sugar to four of flour is generous beside most modern sweet choux, which use considerably less, and it will brown the shells faster.
- Ten minutes is too longThe paste needs only a minute or two of stirring over the heat once the flour is in, just until it forms a smooth ball and films the base of the pan. Ten minutes drives off too much water and the paste will take fewer eggs and rise poorly.
- Cool before the eggsLet the paste sit off the heat for five minutes, to below about 65C, before beating in the first egg. Three eggs is a guide, not a rule: stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick, glossy ribbon.
- Oven heat"Moderate" is conventionally rendered as roughly 350F/175C, which is low for choux. A hot start of 425F/220C for 10-12 minutes, then dropped to 350F/175C for another 15-20, gives better lift and a shell that stays hollow. Do not open the door during the rise.
- Balls, not fingersCassell's shapes these as balls, which makes them cream buns rather than eclairs proper. Pipe 3-inch fingers through a plain half-inch nozzle if you want the classic shape; the baking is the same.
- Drying the shellsPierce each one as soon as it comes out and return them to a turned-off oven for a few minutes. Steam trapped inside is what makes cooled choux go leathery.
- CochinealPowdered cochineal was a red colouring made from dried scale insects, sold loose by grocers. Modern equivalents are carmine or any red food colouring; angelica is still sold candied, though mainly around Christmas.
- Filling and yieldA piping bag is easier than the funnel the recipe specifies; stiffly whipped cream will not pass through a funnel, though thin or barely whipped cream will. Twelve is right for balls; expect eight to ten if you pipe fingers. Fill within a few hours of serving and keep chilled.
The éclair belongs to the family of small pastries built on pâte à choux, the boiled paste that puffs on steam alone and was standardised in French professional kitchens in the early nineteenth century; its invention is often credited to Antonin Carême's circle, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The name means "lightning" or "flash" in French, usually explained by how quickly the things are eaten, or by the gloss of the icing. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s and after, the éclair had crossed the Channel thoroughly enough to appear without translation or explanation, and the book's version shows the English adaptation in progress: cream rather than crème pâtissière, no chocolate glaze, and balls instead of fingers, decorated with the cochineal and angelica that furnished every Victorian confectioner's shelf. The costing — a shilling for twelve — places these as a modest tea-table item rather than a luxury.