Flavoring
Break the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the salt, and set the bowl in a pan of hot water. Beat the eggs with an egg beater till light. Add the sugar, a little at a time, and beat till the batter is as stiff as it can be made. Add the flavoring. Fold in the flour. Put the batter in a pastry bag which has been wet on the inside with cold water. Oil a pan, sprinkle it lightly with flour, and with the bag put the batter onto the pan in the form of lady fingers or round cookies. Cocoanut or chopped nuts or caraway seed may be sprinkled over the cookies, or a raisin may be put in the center of each, just before they are baked.
If a pastry bag is not at hand, the batter may be dropped onto the pan with a spoon.
This is the standard warm-whipped sponge batter used for lady fingers and small sponge drops. The method is complete; the quantities are not stated in this entry, so work from a ladyfinger ratio you trust.
- The hinge: warm the eggsSetting the bowl in hot water brings whole eggs to about 100-110F, which lets them whip to several times their volume and hold it. Do not let the water simmer or the eggs will begin to set on the bottom of the bowl.
- Missing amountsThe eggs, salt, sugar and flour are called for without measures in this text. Whole-egg sponge ratios are often given as roughly equal weights of egg, sugar and flour with a pinch of salt; do not guess wildly, as extra flour will make the drops tough.
- "Stiff as it can be made"With whole eggs this is the ribbon stage, not meringue peaks. The batter should fall from the beater in a thick band that rests on the surface for a few seconds before sinking.
- FoldingSift the flour over the foam in two or three additions and fold with a spatula, cutting down and lifting through. Once the flour is in, the batter deflates quickly, so pipe and bake without delay.
- OvenThe text gives no oven direction. Modern practice for these is about 375-400F for 8 to 12 minutes depending on size. Lady fingers are done when the edges are pale gold and the tops spring back; another two minutes turns them dry and brittle.
- Pan preparationThe text directs oiling the pan and dusting it with flour, which still works, but baking parchment is more reliable for a batter this delicate, which tears when pried loose.
- Pastry bagThe text has the inside of the bag wet with cold water before filling; with a modern plastic or silicone bag this step is unnecessary. Use a plain round tip of about half an inch and pipe fingers three inches long, spaced well apart.
- CocoanutThis most likely means dried shredded or desiccated coconut rather than the sweetened flaked kind sold in bags today, which is more prone to scorching. Nuts, caraway or a raisin all go on before baking as directed.
- Yield and keepingA three-egg batter gives roughly two to three dozen fingers. They stale within a day but hold well in a tin and are the traditional lining for charlottes and trifles, where slight dryness is an advantage.
Lady fingers, the French biscuits à la cuiller or "spoon biscuits," are among the older forms of sponge cake: a batter stiff enough to be shaped without a mould, spooned onto papers before it was piped, the pastry bag becoming common in kitchens over the course of the nineteenth century. Warm-water whipping of the kind described here remains the basis of genoise and other whole-egg sponges.