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Savarin Cake
Put one pound of dried and sifted flour into a pan, and make a hollow in the centre. Dissolve half an ounce of German yeast in a small quantity of warm milk, and set the sponge by pouring this into the hollow, and beating into it with the fingers about a quarter of the flour. Sprinkle flour over the batter thus made, put the basin in a warm place, and let the sponge rise slowly to twice its size. Work into it with a spoon or with the right hand a quarter of a pint of warm milk and two eggs, and add gradually three-quarters of a pound of butter beaten to a cream, half an ounce of salt dissolved in a little warm water, two ounces of powdered sugar, the eighth of a pint additional milk, and three more eggs. Lastly, add two ounces of candied peel cut small. The additions should be made very gradually, the eggs being put in one at a time, and the preparation being beaten well until it leaves the sides of the bowl easily. Butter the inside of a fluted mould rather thickly, and sprinkle a table-spoonful of blanched and chopped almonds on the butter. Beat the paste up again, half fill the mould with it; let it stand in a warm place till it has risen level with the top of the mould. Tie a broad band of buttered paper round the top of the mould, to keep the paste from running over the sides, and bake the cake in a moderate oven. When done enough, turn it out carefully, run a skewer into several parts of it, and pour over and into it a thick syrup flavoured with Curacoa or any other suitable liqueur. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the surface, and send the cake to table warm. Time to bake, one hour or more. Probable cost, 3s., exclusive of the liqueur. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a brioche-rich yeast dough — three-quarters of a pound of butter to a pound of flour — baked in a mould and then soaked with liqueur syrup. The dough is slack and greasy rather than kneadable, and that is correct.
- The hinge: build the butter in slowlyThe butter must be creamed soft and added in small additions once the sponge, milk and first eggs are combined, beating until the dough pulls cleanly from the bowl between each. Dumping it in at once breaks the dough into a curdled, oily mass that will not rise.
- German yeastThis is fresh compressed baker's yeast. Half an ounce is about 14 g fresh, or roughly 1.5 teaspoons of instant dried yeast. Dissolve fresh yeast in milk at blood heat, not hot.
- The salt looks highHalf an ounce is about 14 g, near 2.5 teaspoons for a pound of flour. That is at the very top of the range even for an enriched dough; 10 g is closer to modern practice. Keeping it dissolved and added separately from the yeast, as directed, is sound.
- A moderate ovenAbout 350F / 175C. The recipe gives "one hour or more"; a half-filled mould of this depth may well be done sooner, so begin testing from about 40 minutes. The centre should read around 200F / 93C, and the buttered paper collar prevents the risen dough spilling.
- The mouldA savarin is properly baked in a fluted ring mould; the central hole lets the heat through a very rich dough and gives a well for the syrup. A kugelhopf or plain tube tin works. Filling only halfway is not caution but necessity: half-filled and risen level with the rim, as directed, means the dough doubles.
- Quarter of a pint, eighth of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz / 140 ml; the eighth-pint addition is about 2.5 fl oz / 70 ml. Total liquid is modest because five eggs and the butter carry most of it.
- SoakingSkewer and syrup the cake while both are warm — a cooled crumb takes the syrup unevenly and a cold cake with hot syrup goes soggy at the edges only. Curaçao is still made; rum or kirsch is the usual substitute.
- YieldFive or six as written, and it must be served warm the day it is made. The buttered mould dusted with chopped almonds gives the crust; do not skip the thick buttering.
The savarin is named for Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of Physiologie du gout, and is generally traced to the Julien brothers, Parisian patissiers of the 1840s, who are said to have taken the older baba au rhum — a yeast cake steeped in spirit — and rebuilt it in a ring mould with a syrup poured into the hollow. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary the form was established English confectioner's work. The candied peel in this version pulls it back toward the baba, and the price note of 3s. — a substantial sum for a cake serving six — is a reminder of how much of the cost was butter and eggs.