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Spanish Puffs
Put half a pint of water or milk into a saucepan with a quarter of a pound of butter, a pinch of salt, a little sugar, and as much grated nutmeg or lemon-peel as will flavour the liquor pleasantly. Stir it till it boils, mix in gradually and smoothly four table-spoonfuls of flour, and beat the mixture over the fire for about three minutes. Take it off the fire, and stir in, one at a time, the yolks of six eggs and the whites of four. Let the batter cool, form it into small balls the size of a walnut, and fry these in plenty of boiling fat till they burst. Whilst they are being fried, move them carefully about, that they may be equally cooked. Drain them, dust powdered sugar upon them, dish them on a napkin, and serve immediately. Send some wine-sauce to table with them. If liked, puffs so made can be flavoured with a tea-spoonful of powdered ginger, and may be thus converted into ginger puffs.
This is choux paste, fried rather than baked — what French kitchens call beignets soufflés. The paste behaves exactly as it would for profiteroles, so the usual choux rules apply.
- The hinge: fry them cool and slowThe hinge: fry them at a moderate heat -- the recipe says only "boiling fat", but paste of this kind is best started in fat that is no more than moderately hot, in the region of 325-340F. Hotter and the outside sets before the inside has expanded, so they colour fast and collapse; at a moderate heat they swell, turn themselves over and split open, which is the "burst" the recipe waits for. Allow several minutes a batch, and fry only a few at a time so the fat holds its heat.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. A quarter pound of butter is 115 g — a generous, rich paste by modern proportions.
- Four tablespoonfuls of flourThis is the one genuinely unreliable measurement here. Level modern tablespoons would give far too slack a batter; spoon measures of the period were unstandardised and often generously heaped. Work by the standard choux ratio instead -- roughly 5 oz (140 g) flour to 10 fl oz liquid -- and judge by feel: the paste should come away from the pan in a smooth ball.
- Beating over the fireThe three minutes of beating dries the paste and cooks the starch. Keep it moving on a medium heat until a film forms on the pan base, then take it off. Under-dried paste absorbs fat and stays heavy.
- The eggsSix yolks and four whites is unusually yolk-heavy, which makes a tender, custardy interior. Let the paste cool to warm before adding them or the yolks scramble, and add them one at a time as directed — stop short if the paste starts to slacken past a thick dropping consistency.
- Walnut size means smallThe paste expands greatly in the fat, so stay close to the size the recipe gives, about that of a walnut; much larger and they will brown outside before the centre sets. Two spoons, or a piped and scissored blob, work better than rolling by hand, since the paste is sticky.
- Wine saucePeriod wine sauces for fried sweets varied: some are simply wine, sugar and butter lightly thickened, others an egg-yolk sabayon whisked with sugar and wine over hot water until foaming. Either is sent to table hot in a boat and poured over at the last moment.
- YieldPerhaps thirty or so small puffs on these quantities, enough for six. They deflate within minutes, so fry and serve in one movement rather than holding them warm.
Cassell's places this among the fried sweets, but the paste is ordinary pâte à choux, the same mixture used for éclairs and gougeres, dropped into fat instead of onto a baking sheet. Fried versions travelled under a variety of names in nineteenth-century English books — Spanish puffs, Spanish fritters, soufflé fritters — and the French kitchen knew them as beignets soufflés or, less politely, pets de nonne. Quite what the "Spanish" label denotes is unclear. What the recipe does show is how confident a Victorian kitchen was with choux: the paste is made, enriched, fried and sauced in a single unbroken run, with no explanation of why it puffs, because the cook was expected to know.