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French Souffle
Put into a clean saucepan over the fire a piece of butter, the size of a small egg, and stir it, with two table-spoonfuls of flour. When thick (it must not brown), have ready half a pint of boiling milk and two table-spoonfuls of cream, and stir the whole together. Pour it into a bowl when smooth and thick, and flavour with maraschino, noyeau, or to taste. Beat up the yolks of five eggs, with two ounces of pounded sugar; add them, with the whites of eight eggs whisked to a stiff froth, and bake carefully in a souffle dish. Time, about one hour. Probable cost 1s. 3d. for this quantity.
A standard sweet soufflé built on a thick flour-and-milk panada, in the French manner Cassell's treats as the model for all the others. The recipe gives no oven temperature and a time that no modern cook would use.
- The hingeEverything depends on folding the whisked whites into the base while it is still just warm, and getting the dish into an already-hot oven at once. A soufflé mixture left standing while the oven comes up to heat will never rise properly.
- Quantities in modern termsButter "the size of a small egg" is about 1½ oz (40 g). Half a pint of milk is 10 fl oz imperial, or 1¼ US cups. Two ounces of pounded sugar is roughly ¼ cup of caster sugar — "pounded" simply means crushed fine in a mortar, which caster or superfine sugar supplies ready-made.
- Oven heatNone is stated. A sweet soufflé of this size wants a moderately hot oven, 375–400°F, with the shelf low enough that the top does not colour before the centre sets.
- The hour is far too longThe hour is probably too long -- at a modern 375-400°F this quantity should be done well before an hour: figure 25-40 minutes, when well risen, browned, and only slightly tremulous at the centre. The recipe's hour reflects the cooler, less controllable ovens of the period. For dish size, see below (1½ quarts).
- Five yolks, eight whitesNot an error. The extra whites add lift without extra fat, and unequal yolk-to-white ratios turn up in other nineteenth-century sweet recipes. Keep the ratio.
- Cool the base firstLet the thickened milk-and-flour mixture drop to lukewarm before beating in the yolks, or they will set into threads. The recipe's instruction to pour it into a bowl is doing that work quietly.
- Maraschino and noyeauMaraschino is the clear Dalmatian cherry liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Noyeau (usually spelled noyau today) is a kernel-flavoured liqueur with a marzipan character; crème de noyaux is the surviving commercial form. The recipe gives no quantity, only 'to taste'; about two tablespoons is enough, and more will slacken the base.
- Dish and yieldButter the soufflé dish and dust it with caster sugar so the mixture can climb. This quantity fills a 1½-quart dish and serves four to six, and must go to the table straight from the oven.
Soufflé is simply the past participle of souffler, to blow or puff, and the dish is generally traced to the professional kitchens of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Paris, where cooks in the Carême line codified the method of a cooked flour base lightened with beaten whites. Maraschino and noyau were among the liqueurs found on the Victorian dessert table, and both lean on the almond-and-stone-fruit note that ran through much nineteenth-century sweet cookery. The costing at 1s. 3d. marks it as a dish for a household with eight eggs and cream to spare.