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Coffee Souffle
1 1/2 cups coffee infusion 1/2 cup milk 2/3 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 eggs 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine Mix coffee infusion, milk, one-half of the sugar and gelatine, and heat in double boiler. Add remaining sugar, salt, and yolks of eggs slightly beaten; cook until mixture thickens, remove from range, add whites of eggs beaten until stiff and vanilla. Mould, chill, and serve with cream.
A cold gelatine dessert in the shape of a soufflé — nothing is baked, and the lightness comes from beaten whites suspended in a setting custard. One step in it puts the dish outside current safe practice.
- Why this one failsThe stiffly beaten whites go into the custard after it has been taken off the heat, and the mixture then goes straight into a mould to chill. The whites are never brought to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the residual warmth of a thickened custard is neither hot enough nor held long enough to be relied on.
- Not the same as a baked souffleAn oven-baked souffle at least puts the whites through a hot oven, though the centre may stay soft. Here there is no oven step at all, so nothing in the method compensates. If you want a coffee souffle, use a current recipe written around either baking or pasteurised whites.
- Coffee infusionThis means strong brewed coffee, not extract, essence or a coffee liqueur.
- Granulated gelatineOne tablespoon is somewhat more than a modern quarter-ounce envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons, 7 g) — nearer 9 or 10 g — which is ample to set the 2 cups of liquid here to an unmoulding firmness. Older granulated gelatine is generally reckoned to have varied in strength more than today's standardised product.
- "Remove from range"The range is the cooking stove; the phrase simply means take the pan off the heat. "Mould" is a verb here — turn the mixture into a mould before chilling.
- YieldTwo cups of liquid plus three eggs gives something over a pint of mixture before the beaten whites are folded in; enough for four to six servings.