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Lady Fingers
Whisk four fresh eggs thoroughly, the whites and the yolks separately. Mix smoothly with the yolks three ounces of powdered sugar and three ounces of flour, add the whites, and after-wards a quarter of a pint of rose-water. Beat all together for some minutes. Have ready a well-buttered baking-tin, form the paste upon it with a spoon in "fingers," three inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide, sift a little powdered sugar over them, let them stand five or six minutes to melt the sugar, then put them into a moderate oven, and bake until they are lightly browned. When cool, put them in pairs, and keep them in a tin canister closely covered until wanted for use. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for two dozen fingers.
A sponge finger batter of the old school: no butter, no baking powder, only whipped eggs for lift. Everything depends on how gently the whites go in.
- Fold, do not beat"Beat all together for some minutes" will destroy the whipped whites and give you flat, leathery strips. Fold the whites into the yolk-sugar-flour mixture in two or three additions with a spatula, working only until no streaks remain.
- The rose-water is the problem measurementA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, which would slacken this batter to a pourable liquid that cannot be spooned into fingers, and commercial rose-water today is likely to be stronger than a household distillation. Treat the quantity as suspect: 1 to 2 teaspoons gives the intended perfume, and any more liquid than that needs compensating flour.
- Powdered sugarIn this book it means granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Caster sugar is the correct substitute in the batter; icing sugar is fine for the dusting on top.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Line the tin with parchment rather than relying on butter alone â these are thin and stick readily.
- Twenty minutes is too longFingers three inches by three-quarters of an inch will be lightly coloured and dry to the touch in 10 to 14 minutes at 350F. Twenty minutes gives hard biscuits rather than the sponge fingers intended.
- Use a piping bagA spoon was the tool available; a bag with a half-inch plain tip gives even fingers that bake at the same rate. Space them an inch apart, as they spread.
- The sugar restLetting the sifted sugar stand five or six minutes before baking is deliberate â it dissolves and then crusts in the oven, giving the characteristic pearled, slightly crackled top. Do not skip it.
- Yield and storageTwo dozen fingers, joined back to back in pairs while cool. They go soft quickly in humid air; the closely covered tin the recipe calls for is genuinely necessary if they are to stay crisp for any length of time.
These are the sponge fingers known in Italy as savoiardi and in France as biscuits à la cuiller — literally "spoon biscuits", a name generally traced to the shaping method described here, before piping bags were standard household equipment. The form is often associated with the courts of Savoy, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the fundamental preparations of the pastry kitchen: the same batter, baked in a tin, gives the sponge for a charlotte or trifle. The rose-water is the older flavouring tradition showing through; vanilla and lemon appear to have largely displaced it in English baking over the following decades.