Egg Souffle
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk 1 cup cream 4 eggs 1 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Cream the butter, add flour, and pour on gradually scalded milk and cream. Cook in double boiler five minutes, and add yolks of eggs, beaten until thick and lemon-colored. Remove from fire, add seasonings, and fold in whites of eggs beaten until stiff and dry. Turn into a buttered dish, or buttered individual moulds, set in pan of hot water, and bake in a slow oven until firm. Egg Souffle may be served with White Sauce I, highly seasoned with celery salt, paprika, and onion juice.
A baked custard soufflé of the Fannie Farmer school: a thick white roux base enriched with yolks, lightened with whites, and set gently in a water bath rather than puffed dramatically in a hot oven.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirBeat the whites only to firm peaks and cut them into the warm base in three additions with a spatula. "Stiff and dry" is period phrasing for fully beaten whites; taken past that point they turn granular and will not carry the batter.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300-325F. The water bath plus the low heat is what keeps the mixture custardy instead of dry and cracked.
- TimingThe original gives none. Individual moulds are firm in about 20-25 minutes; a single dish of this size needs 35-45 minutes. It is done when the centre no longer wobbles as a liquid and a knife inserted at the edge comes out clean.
- "Cream the butter, add flour"In books of this period this is a paste method: work softened (not melted) butter with a spoon, blend in the flour, then pour on the scalded liquid gradually. If you prefer, you can instead melt the butter and cook the flour in it for a minute before adding liquid; the result is the same sauce with slightly less raw-flour taste.
- Scalded milk and creamHeating the dairy to just below a simmer before adding it was routine in this period; keeping milk of variable quality is one reason usually offered. It still helps the sauce thicken smoothly, but cold liquid whisked in gradually works as well.
- SaltA full teaspoon in this quantity is assertive by modern taste, and the suggested sauce adds celery salt on top. Start with half and correct after the yolks go in.
- The water bathUse hot, not boiling, water reaching halfway up the moulds, and set the pan on a low shelf. Boiling water will overcook the outer edge before the centre sets.
- Yield and servingFour eggs and two cups of dairy serve four generously, or six as a first course. Serve immediately: this is a set custard rather than a tall soufflé, so it sinks less, but it is still best straight from the oven.
Soufflés reached American cookbooks by way of French professional kitchens, and by the 1890s the domestic-science writers had largely domesticated them: a measured white sauce base, a fixed ratio of eggs, and a water bath to make the result forgiving enough for a home cook with an unreliable range. If the dish sits in the Eggs chapter rather than among the desserts, that fits the period's treatment of eggs as a serious main-course protein for luncheon and supper. The cross-reference to "White Sauce I" is characteristic of the era's teaching cookbooks, which built dishes out of numbered foundation recipes learned earlier in the course; onion juice was generally got by cutting an onion and pressing the cut face against a grater or a spoon.