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French Confectioner
Cool milk; when lukewarm, add yeast cakes, and when they are dissolved add remaining ingredients, and beat thoroughly with hand ten minutes; let rise six hours. Keep in ice-box over night; in morning turn on floured board, roll in long rectangular piece one-fourth inch thick; spread with softened butter, fold from sides toward centre to make three layers. Cut off pieces three-fourths inch wide; cover and let rise. Take each piece separately in hands and twist from ends in opposite directions, coil and bring ends together at top of cake. Let rise in pans and bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven; cool and brush over with confectioners' sugar, moistened with boiling water to spread, and flavored with vanilla.
This is a laminated, refrigerated sweet dough — the ancestor of the twisted Danish coffee cake — and the method survives intact even though the quantities do not. A few of the terms and timings need translating.
- Yeast cakesA yeast cake was normally a compressed fresh-yeast block; the small commercial size was about 0.6 oz, roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast, though larger cakes and dried cakes were also sold under the name. Compressed yeast is still sold in some markets but is not interchangeable by weight with dry.
- The proportions are not statedThe instruction to "add remaining ingredients" refers to a list that does not appear with this text. Treat the page as a method rather than a formula: any enriched sweet dough of the period (milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, salt) is what it assumes.
- "Moderate oven"Roughly 350-375F. Small twisted rolls of this size are done in the twenty minutes given; take them out when the coils are deep gold and the centre of a split one reads about 190F.
- Milk temperatureLukewarm means around 100-110F. Yeast begins to suffer above about 120F and is killed in the 130-140F range, and the long first rise makes that failure expensive.
- The six-hour rise plus overnight chillThis is not slack instruction. The long ambient rise builds flavour, and the cold night firms the dough — the butter is not spread until the morning — so it can be rolled and folded without the butter being absorbed. Do not shorten the refrigeration; a warm dough at the rolling stage gives a bread, not a laminated cake.
- FoldingFolding the sheet from both sides toward the centre gives three layers, a single letter fold. One fold only — this is a lightly laminated dough, closer to a Danish than to puff pastry, and further turns will make it tough without more butter.
- ShapingTwisting the cut strip from both ends in opposite directions before coiling is what exposes the layers on the finished surface. The recipe has you bring the ends together at the top of the cake; press them together firmly or the coil unwinds as it proves.
- The glazeConfectioners' sugar loosened with boiling water and vanilla sets to a thin opaque icing. The recipe has you cool the cakes before brushing; on a hot cake the icing simply runs off.
- YieldStrips three-quarters of an inch wide cut from a rectangle of this thickness give small individual cakes; the number per batch cannot be worked out, as no quantities are given with this text. Best the day they are baked.