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DARIOLES (a la Duchesse)
Proceed as before directed. This recipe differs in allowing more time for baking, and requiring no boiling of custard. Mix half a pint of milk with two ounces of flour, three ounces of pounded sugar, six well-beaten eggs, and two ounces of butter into a batter, and put it at once into the moulds, first adding a little essence of vanilla, drop by drop, until the mixture is flavoured. The essence of lemon, almonds, or cinnamon may be substituted for vanilla. The moulds should be only three-parts filled, and from twenty-five to thirty-five minutes allowed for baking. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for seven moulds.
A rich baked custard batter for small moulds — closer to a clafoutis or popover than to a set custard, given six eggs to half a pint of milk. The instruction that matters most is the one about filling: this mixture rises hard in the oven and will spill if you overfill.
- The half pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. With 2 oz flour, 3 oz sugar, 2 oz butter and six eggs, the batter is thin and pourable, not spoonable.
- "Proceed as before directed"Darioles were classically baked in moulds lined with thin puff paste, and the back-reference probably points to such a method in the preceding entry; the text here does not say so, and the only differences it names are the longer baking and the omission of boiling the custard. Buttered moulds alone give a plain baked custard-batter.
- The mouldsDariole moulds are small, straight-sided, slightly tapered tins; capacities varied. Working back from this quantity, three-parts filled across seven moulds, suggests moulds of around 4 fl oz rather than the smallest sizes. Deep muffin cups or small ramekins of similar capacity stand in well.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; Victorian ranges were not calibrated, and the book specifies no oven heat here. A modern equivalent of about 350F/180C suits the stated 25 to 35 minutes; the darioles are done when well risen, set at the centre and browned on top.
- Three-parts filledTake this literally. The high proportion of egg makes the batter climb like a Yorkshire pudding before it sets, and it will sink somewhat as it cools.
- Pounded sugarSugar was often bought in loaves and crushed or pounded at home; pounded sugar corresponds roughly to modern caster sugar. Granulated works but dissolves less readily in a cold batter.
- The butterMelt it and let it cool slightly before beating it in, or it will sit in lumps. The recipe itself says nothing about the state of the butter.
- FlavouringsVictorian "essences" were less standardised than modern extracts and varied considerably in strength, which is why the recipe says drop by drop. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, or a scant quarter-teaspoon of almond or lemon extract, and taste the batter before committing.
- ServingSeven small moulds serve seven as a light sweet course, turned out or left in their cases and eaten warm, with a little sifted sugar or a fruit preserve.
Darioles are old -- the word appears in medieval French and English cookery for a small pastry case filled with a sweet, enriched custard, and by the nineteenth century it was often used for the tapered tin as much as for any fixed filling. The tag à la Duchesse is one of the many nineteenth-century French kitchen labels attached to richer or more refined versions of a dish, though it carried no fixed definition; here it marks a batter thick with eggs and flavoured with essence, baked straight into the moulds rather than cooked first as a custard on the stove. Cassell's costed its recipes (1s. 8d. for seven), and the list of interchangeable essences -- vanilla, lemon, almond, cinnamon -- reflects the growth of the commercial flavouring trade in the later nineteenth century.