Home › The Orange › Orange Flower Soufflé
Orange Flower Soufflé
Break in bits in a bowl six macaroons (well flavoured with almonds) and mix them with a handful of orange blossoms or buds, pounding them well together. Orange flower water may be substituted (a large wineglassful). Also stir in six ounces of powdered sugar. Beat separately now the whites and yolks of six eggs. Add the smooth yolks to the other ingredients and last stir in lightly the stiff whites. Have four ounces of butter heating in the omelet pan and when beginning to turn brown pour in on it the "batter." When it begins to colour transfer it to the soufflé dish (buttered); place in hot oven and bake about ten minutes; till slightly browned and puffed quite high. On it sift powdered sugar and serve at once.
An omelette soufflé rather than a true baked soufflé: the egg mixture is set briefly in a pan before it goes into the oven. Two things govern the result — the strength of your orange flower water and the speed with which it reaches the table.
- Orange flower water, sparinglyA large wineglassful is roughly 2 to 4 fl oz. Modern commercial orange flower waters vary a great deal in strength, and some will overwhelm the dish at anything like that quantity; 1 to 2 teaspoons is a safer starting point, and too much tastes soapy. If using fresh blossoms, they must come from an untreated tree.
- What a macaroon meantNot the coconut kind. These are the crisp almond macaroons of the period — amaretti or almond-flour macaroons work; six give roughly a scant cup of crumbs. Pound them to a coarse powder rather than a paste.
- Sugar and butterSix ounces of powdered sugar is about 1 1/2 cups, which reads sweet to modern palates; 4 ounces is defensible. Four ounces of butter in the pan is also generous — 2 tablespoons is enough to film the pan and colour the underside.
- Hot ovenRead that as a hot oven, roughly 400-450F. Ten minutes at that heat suits a shallow dish; the centre should still be soft when the top is browned and risen.
- Fold, do not stirThe whites carry the whole thing. Beat them to soft-firm peaks, then fold in a third to loosen the yolk mixture before folding in the rest. Overworking here is the usual cause of a flat result.
- The pan stage"When it begins to colour" means only the base has set, perhaps a minute over moderate heat. Slide it into the buttered dish without deflating it; an ovenproof skillet lets you skip the transfer entirely.
- Serve immediatelyA soufflé of this type holds its height for two or three minutes at most. Have the sifted sugar and the plates ready before it leaves the oven.
- YieldSix eggs make enough for four to six as a dessert course.
Orange flower water was one of the standard perfumes of European confectionery from the seventeenth century onward, distilled from bitter orange blossom and used much as vanilla later would be — a few spoonfuls to scent custards, cakes, biscuits and syrups. It reached English and American kitchens as an imported bottled flavouring, and the recipe offers it in place of fresh blossoms: only cooks in citrus-growing regions could gather a handful of buds. The dish itself belongs to the family of omelette soufflés, sweet egg dishes started on the stove and finished in the oven. The orange is represented here not by its juice or peel but by its flower, a reminder that the whole tree was treated as a larder.