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Souffle, Bread
Take some milk, and boil it with a little cream, giving the preparation any taste you please. Scoop out carefully the soft part of two or three rolls, rub the bread through a sieve, soak in the flavoured milk, and proceed as for potato souffl (see SOUFFLE, POTATO, AU CITRON, and SOUFFLE, ORANGE-FLOWER).
This is a dictionary entry rather than a standalone recipe: it gives a method and sends you elsewhere for the proportions. Read it as a technique for a panade-based sweet soufflé, and expect to supply the numbers yourself.
- The missing quantitiesNo amounts are given for the milk and cream, and sugar and eggs are not mentioned at all; presumably the proportions are to be taken from the cross-referenced potato and orange-flower soufflé frame only, the crumb of two or three dinner rolls is roughly 3 to 4 oz of bread, which will take about a cup of milk and cream together, 2 to 3 oz sugar, and four eggs separated.
- Rolls, not sliced breadA plain, close-crumbed white roll is the likely intention, and day-old bread scoops and sieves more easily than fresh. Use a firm white roll or a baguette-style bread, crust removed, and pass the crumb through a sieve or work it briefly in a food processor to a fine, even crumb.
- \Rubbing through a sieve is a purely mechanical step, not a straining. It exists to break the crumb down so it dissolves into the hot milk without lumps and gives a smooth base rather than a bread pudding.
- Separating the eggsThe hinge of the dish, and the part the entry assumes you already know: yolks are beaten into the warm, slightly cooled panade, and the whites are whisked to soft peaks and folded in last. Fold in two or three additions and stop while streaks are still faintly visible; overworking is what collapses it.
- Timing and dishThe entry gives no dish, oven or timing directions at all. In a modern oven, bake in a buttered, sugared dish at 350 to 375F for 25 to 35 minutes depending on depth, until well risen and just set at the centre. It must go to table immediately; a bread panade soufflé falls as fast as any other.
- YieldThe quantities above fill a 1½-pint soufflé dish and serve four as a dessert.
Cassell's arranges its material alphabetically and by keyword, which is why this entry reads like a note to an assistant rather than a recipe: bread soufflé; the reader is expected to turn to the potato and orange-flower entries for the rest. The method itself is the old panade base — bread crumb swelled in hot liquid and bound with yolks — and it gave Victorian kitchens a use for day-old rolls. The flavourings implied by the cross-references, lemon and orange-flower water, were both standard in nineteenth-century English confectionery; orange-flower water in particular was a staple of the store cupboard before vanilla extract became cheap and widely available.