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Custard Souffle
Two scant tablespoons of butter, two scant tablespoons of flour, two scant tablespoons of powdered sugar, one cup of milk, four eggs. Put milk in a double boiler; when it boils add butter and flour and cook eight minutes, stirring all the time; beat the yolks light, add gradually to the mixture, set aside to cool; when ready to bake stir in the beaten whites.
Cream Sauce-One-half cup of butter, one cup of powdered sugar, one-fourth a cup of cream, four tablespoons of wine.
— Mrs. Daniel J. Cassidy
A small, plain souffle built on a milk-and-flour base rather than a proper roux, with a wine hard sauce alongside. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, so the two things you most need are the two things missing.
- Oven and timeThe original gives no temperature and no baking time. In a modern oven, 350F works; a four-egg souffle in a 1 1/2-quart dish takes roughly 25 to 30 minutes and should still wobble slightly at the centre.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe instruction to "stir in the beaten whites" is loose language. Lighten the cooled base with a spoonful of white first, then fold the rest in with a spatula in a few strokes. Stirring properly will deflate the whites and give you a dense custard.
- Scant tablespoonsA scant tablespoon is a level one shaken slightly short, so somewhat under 14 g of butter or about 7 g of flour. The difference from full tablespoons is small, but the wording signals a light hand with the flour.
- Adding butter and flour to boiling milkThis inverted method will lump unless the flour and butter are worked together into a paste first and whisked into the milk in small pieces. Eight minutes in a double boiler is right for cooking out the raw flour taste.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this period powdered sugar usually meant finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match, particularly in the sauce.
- Tempering the yolksThe recipe says to add the beaten yolks gradually, which matters: the base is hot enough to scramble them. Easiest is to beat a ladle of the hot base into the yolks first, then return the lot to the pan.
- The cream sauceDespite the name it is not a pouring custard but a creamed butter-and-sugar sauce of the hard-sauce family, loosened with cream and wine: cream the butter and sugar until pale, then beat in the cream and wine a little at a time so it does not split. Sherry or Madeira suits it. Serve it cold against the hot souffle.
- Dish and yieldButter and sugar a 1 1/2-quart dish so the batter can climb. Serves four as written, and it must go to the table straight from the oven.
Souffles had a place in American community cookbooks as a respectable set piece for a lady's dinner: cheap in materials, showy on the table, and a test of whether the cook could manage her eggs and her oven. The base here, a milk sauce thickened with flour and enriched with yolks, is the standard sweet souffle foundation taught in that period, though the practice of dropping butter and flour into already-boiling milk marks it as a home cook's shortcut rather than a professional method. The accompanying wine sauce belongs to an older tradition still, the creamed butter-and-sugar hard sauces served with puddings throughout the nineteenth century. Contributions signed with a married name, as this one is, are often said to have carried the reputation of the household that gave it.