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Souffle, Coffee
Melt two ounces of flour in a stewpan, then add gradually and mix in smoothly six ounces of flour, a pinch of salt, half a pint of strong coffee, and half a pint of cream. When the mixture leaves the sides of the pan, cool, and add off the fire the yolks of six eggs and ten ounces of sugar. Whisk the whites of nine eggs till firm, stir them lightly but thoroughly into the preparation, and finish as directed in SOUFFLE.
A panada-based sweet soufflé of the late Victorian type, thick with flour and rich with egg. The original carries an obvious printer's error in its first line, and the instructions stop short because the book expects you to have read its main SOUFFLE entry.
- The first "flour" is butterYou cannot melt flour, and a soufflé built on eight ounces of flour to a pint of liquid would be paste. Read the opening as two ounces of butter melted in the pan, then six ounces of flour stirred in to make a roux.
- Imperial half-pintsCassell's half pint is 10 fl oz, not the American 8. So about 11⁄4 cups strong coffee and 11⁄4 cups cream, or roughly 285 ml of each.
- A stewpan is a saucepanA wide, straight-sided pan of moderate depth, used here on direct heat. Any heavy-based saucepan does the work; the weight matters because the paste scorches easily once it thickens.
- "Strong coffee" means strongThe coffee flavour has to survive half a pint of cream, ten ounces of sugar and the whites of nine eggs plus six yolks. Brew at roughly double normal strength, or use espresso; ordinary filter coffee will be largely lost.
- The hinge: paste temperature before the yolksWhen the mixture leaves the sides of the pan it is very hot, and yolks dropped straight in will scramble. Let it cool to warm — comfortable to touch — before beating them in, then fold the whites in with a light hand while the base is still just warm and slack enough to accept them.
- Nine whites to six yolksThe surplus whites are deliberate; they carry a heavy panada. Whisk to firm peaks but not dry and grainy, and fold in a third first to loosen the base before the rest.
- Finishing and ovenThe referenced SOUFFLE entry is where the baking directions lie; this page gives none. Standard practice for the type is a buttered and sugared dish or paper case, filled a little short of the rim, baked in a moderate oven -- around 350-375°F/180-190°C -- for roughly 25 to 35 minutes depending on depth, and served the moment it comes out.
- Sugar and yieldTen ounces is nearer 11⁄2 cups, sweet by modern taste; six or seven ounces will suit many palates. The quantity should fill something like a two-quart dish and serve about eight, though the book states no yield.
Soufflé is simply the past participle of French souffler, to blow or puff, and the dish as Cassell's understood it belongs to the nineteenth-century professional repertoire codified by Carême's successors: a thick flour-and-milk panada enriched with yolks, lightened with a surplus of whites, and rushed to table before it fell. Flavouring that base with coffee was a standard variation in the same series as vanilla, chocolate and lemon, and it reflects how thoroughly coffee had settled into British dessert cookery, appearing in ices, custards, crèmes and cakes as often as in the cup. The clipped ending — "finish as directed in SOUFFLE" — is characteristic of Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an alphabetical reference of several thousand entries that cross-refers rather than repeats.