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Wine Froth, for Dessert
Take the yolks of twelve eggs and a pint of wine, and place them in a deep saucepan on the fire, adding the grated peel of a lemon and sugar to taste. Beat with a whisk till the mixture of the eggs becomes a thick froth, then stir in the whites, which must be beaten to snow. Whisk the froth until it thickness, then pour it into cups or glasses; if into glasses, the froth should first be allowed to cool a little.
This is a zabaglione in all but name, scaled for a Victorian dessert table. The whole thing hangs on gentle heat: direct flame under twelve yolks will scramble them in seconds.
- Use a bain-marie"On the fire" in a deep saucepan assumes a coal range with cool spots and a cook who never stops whisking. Set a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water instead, with the base clear of the water, and keep the whisk moving the whole time.
- The wineMarsala is the classic choice and gives the expected sweetness; a sweet sherry or Madeira works as well. A dry white will need considerably more sugar. A pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so roughly 2 1/2 US cups.
- Sugar to tasteBeat the sugar into the yolks before any heat goes near them, not afterwards. Start at about 4 oz (generous 1/2 cup) for twelve yolks and adjust; undissolved sugar added late leaves the froth grainy.
- Know when it is doneThe mixture thickens to the point where the whisk leaves a trail and it holds a soft ribbon, somewhere in the region of 160-170F. Much beyond that the yolks are liable to curdle, and once they do no amount of whisking brings them back.
- The whitesFold the beaten whites in off the heat, or the residual warmth of the bowl will do the setting for you. Returning the combined mixture to gentle heat, as written, is possible but risks deflating what you just built.
- Twelve eggs is a partyWith a pint of wine this yields something like ten to twelve small glasses. Halve or quarter it for a household; the method is unchanged.
- Serve promptlyA hot wine froth begins to weep before long. Cooling it in glasses, as the recipe allows, buys a little time but not much -- it is not a make-ahead dessert.
Egg yolks whisked hot with sweet wine turn up across Europe under many names: zabaglione in Italy, sabayon in France, and in English cookery books as wine froth, wine whip or egg wine. Cassell's places it among desserts rather than invalid cookery, though the same mixture, thinner and less sweet, was for centuries given to the sick and to women after childbirth as a restorative -- a use often traced back to Renaissance Italy, where the dish is generally said to originate. The version here, with beaten whites folded in, is closer to a soufflé-like froth than to the pourable sauce a modern sabayon usually means, and it reflects a period in which a competent kitchen had the arm and the servants to whisk twelve eggs over a range without pausing.