Home › The Principles of Cookery › Orange Souffle
Orange Souffle
Rub three ounces of ground rice, or, if preferred, dried flour, with two ounces of fresh butter. Pour upon these half a pint of milk sweetened and flavoured with lumps of sugar which have been rubbed upon the rinds of sweet oranges. Pour the mixture into a saucepan, and stir it briskly until it boils. Turn it into a basin, and when cool add the well-beaten yolks of three and the whites of five eggs. Bake in a souffle-dish, in a moderate oven. Tie a broad band of well-oiled paper round the top to prevent the batter falling over when it rises high in the dish. Serve the souffle the moment it is taken out of the oven, or it will fall and its appearance be spoilt. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A late-Victorian baked soufflé built on a rice-flour panada rather than the flour-and-butter roux most modern recipes use. The wording is compressed in one important place, and that is where most failures will come from.
- Beat and fold the whites separatelyThe instruction to "add the well-beaten yolks of three and the whites of five eggs" assumes knowledge the modern reader may not have: the yolks are stirred into the cooled panada, and the five whites are whipped to firm but not dry peaks and folded in last, in two or three additions. Stirring unbeaten whites into the base gives a dense baked custard, not a soufflé.
- Ground riceA finely milled rice meal, slightly coarser than modern rice flour though rice flour substitutes well; not rice pudding grains. The "dried flour" alternative means plain wheat flour spread on a tray and warmed in a low oven to drive off moisture; ordinary all-purpose flour works without that step.
- Half a pint of milkAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ cups. With 3 oz rice flour and 2 oz butter the base will be very thick, closer to a paste than a sauce; that is correct and is what carries the whites.
- Sugar rubbed on the rindRubbing loaf sugar against orange peel was a common period way to take up the oils. The recipe gives no quantity; two or three ounces of granulated sugar tossed with the finely grated zest of two oranges, left ten minutes, gives much the same perfumed sugar. Use unwaxed fruit.
- A moderate ovenRoughly 350F by the usual modern equivalence for a moderate oven. Bake on a low rack and do not open the door for the first twenty minutes.
- The paper bandAn oiled paper collar tied round the rim, standing two to three inches above it, lets the soufflé climb straight up. Parchment or foil, buttered, does the job; remove it at the table, not in the kitchen.
- Dish and timingA buttered and sugared 1½-quart soufflé dish suits this quantity. Half an hour at 350F is realistic for that depth, but judge by a top that is well risen and set with only the faintest wobble at the centre.
- YieldFive or six as written, and the warning about serving at once is not decoration — the structure begins to slump within two or three minutes of leaving the oven.
The name comes from the French souffler, to blow or puff, and souffles reached English cookery books largely by way of French professional cooks in the earlier nineteenth century. The instruction to rub loaf sugar against the orange rind is a common period method of capturing citrus oil, and the note of "probable cost, 10d" is a reminder that Cassell's was written for a household budgeting in pence, where the oranges and the five eggs were a considered expense rather than an idle one.