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Irish Puffs
Make a light batter with a table-spoonful of flour, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and five well-beaten yolks of eggs. Add nearly an ounce of melted butter, and stir into the batter half a pint of cream and the frothed whites of the eggs. Beat the batter before adding the cream, etc., for nearly fifteen minutes. Bake in buttered cups. Time, about fifteen minutes to bake. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for six cups.
This is essentially a baked egg batter — closer to a soufflé or a very rich popover than to anything doughy — and the proportions look wrong until you realise the flour is there only to stabilise the eggs. Trust the ratio.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe recipe says "stir" in the whites, but the puff depends entirely on the air in them. Fold the frothed whites in with a spatula in three additions and get the cups into the oven at once; a batter this thin loses its lift within a few minutes of standing.
- That single spoonful of flour is correctOne tablespoon of flour to five yolks and half a pint of cream is not a misprint. The dish sets on egg protein, not starch, which is why it rises high and then settles as it cools.
- Half a pint, BritishCassell's is a London book, so half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz — about 1¼ US cups. "Nearly an ounce" of butter is a scant 2 tablespoons.
- Fifteen minutes of beatingThat figure assumes beating by hand. With a stand mixer, three or four minutes on medium-high will bring the yolks, flour and salt to the pale, ribbony state intended.
- No oven temperature is givenNineteenth-century recipes of this type were baked in a hot oven. Around 400–425F suits the fifteen-minute time; lower and they will set without rising, higher and the tops scorch before the centres are done.
- "Buttered cups"Ramekins, dariole moulds or a deep muffin tin all work. Butter them heavily and fill no more than two-thirds, and stand them on a preheated baking sheet so the bases set quickly.
- Serve the moment they leave the ovenThey collapse as they cool, like any soufflé. Take them to the table in their cups, with sugar and lemon or a spoonful of preserve if you want them sweet — the original batter is unsweetened and works either way.
- YieldSix small cups, as stated; count them as one course for three to four people rather than six unless the rest of the meal is substantial.
"Puffs" in Victorian cookery covered a wide family of things that rose in the oven and were expected to fall again, and the Irish label is generally treated as a name of convenience rather than evidence of Irish origin. What the recipe records is a batter that is almost all yolk, cream and air, which presumes a cook with a good whisk, a cool larder and access to cheap eggs and dairy. The "probable cost, 1s. 3d." is characteristic of Cassell's, which gives a probable cost for its recipes; at late-Victorian prices this was a modest sum for a dish that looked far more extravagant than it was, which is much of the point of a puff.