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Savoy Biscuits, Hot
Take a dozen fresh eggs, break them into a vessel, which is to be put into another containing some water nearly boiling. With these eggs mix a pound of superfine pounded sugar. Beat them well in the vessel which stands in the hot water. When you perceive that the eggs are no longer soft, put three-quarters of a pound of flour into a silk sieve not very closely woven; mix the flour well with the eggs, which is done by shaking the sieve, then add about two spoonfuls of orange-flower water. If you only use lemon, put in a spoonful of cold water. Rub a mould over with butter; powder some sugar round, fill the mould with the preparation, powder some sugar over it, and bake in an oven moderately hot. Ascertain with a little skewer whether the middle part is sufficiently baked before you take it out of the oven. If the biscuit is not very large, it will be done in three-quarters of an hour. Biscuits, like other pastries of a large size, require the oven not to be too hot, and therefore they must be kept in a longer time.
This is a whisked sponge in the old French manner — no butter in the batter, no chemical leavening, all the lift coming from eggs beaten warm over water. The instructions are sound but the quantities are banquet-sized.
- Scale it downTwelve eggs, a pound of sugar and twelve ounces of flour make roughly three large sponges. A quarter of the recipe — 3 eggs, 4 oz (115 g) sugar, 3 oz (85 g) flour — fills one 8-inch tin or a single tall Savoy mould and behaves the same way.
- The hinge: warm, not cooked"When you perceive that the eggs are no longer soft" means the foam has thickened to the ribbon stage and holds a trail from the whisk, at roughly 110-120F. If the bowl gets hot enough to set the eggs you have sweet scrambled egg and nothing will rescue it. Keep the water below a simmer and the bowl off the water's surface.
- Folding by sieveShaking flour through a loose-woven sieve directly over the foam is a deliberate technique, not fussiness: it aerates the flour and spreads it in a thin veil so it can be folded in with very few strokes. A fine mesh strainer held high does the same job. Fold with a spatula, cutting down and turning over, and stop the moment no dry flour shows.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" is probably somewhere around 325-350F (160-175C), though the term is imprecise. The warning at the end is the important part — a large sponge baked hot sets a crust before the centre rises, then sinks. Three-quarters of an hour at the lower end suits a deep mould; a shallow 8-inch tin will be done sooner.
- Butter and sugar the mouldThe sugar coating is what gives a Savoy biscuit its characteristic crisp, faintly crunchy shell, and it helps the baked sponge release. Use caster or granulated sugar, not flour, and knock out the excess.
- Superfine pounded sugarThat is caster sugar. It dissolves readily in the warm foam, where coarser granulated sugar may not fully dissolve.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, and potent; use it sparingly — about half a teaspoon per three eggs. "If you only use lemon" means lemon in place of the flower water, with a spoonful of water to make up the liquid.
- Testing and coolingA skewer in the centre should come out clean and the sponge should spring back when pressed. Cool in the mould for ten minutes before turning out; a warm fat-free sponge tears easily.
- ServingThe "Hot" in the title refers to the method — the eggs are beaten over hot water — rather than to how it is served; the recipe gives no serving instructions. Fat-free sponges stale quickly, so they are best eaten the day they are made.
The Savoy biscuit — biscuit de Savoie — is traditionally traced to the court of the Counts of Savoy in the fourteenth century, a story that is often repeated but documented nowhere. What is clearer is that by the eighteenth century it was a standard piece of French pastry work, baked in a tall fluted mould and prized because it rose on eggs alone at a time when bakers had no reliable chemical leaven. The technique of beating whole eggs with sugar over hot water to the ribbon stage, then sifting flour in, is the foundation skill that also underlies genoise, ladyfingers and Swiss rolls. The instruction to keep the oven cool and the baking long is the mark of an author writing for solid-fuel ovens, where the real difficulty was not reaching heat but moderating it.