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Apricot Souffle
Rub enough fruit through a sieve to make three-fourths of a cup of pulp.
Heat in a saucepan and sweeten if needed. Beat the whites of three eggs until stiff and dry, gradually add the hot fruit pulp, and continue beating. Turn into buttered and sugared individual molds, having them three-fourths full; set molds in pan of water and bake until firm in a slow oven.
This is a fruit soufflé in the old sense: no yolks, no flour, no butter-and-milk base, just sweetened purée folded hot into stiff whites. It rises well and collapses fast, so have the table ready.
- Slow ovenRead that as 300F (150C). The water bath plus a low oven keeps the whites from setting into a rubbery skin before the interior has puffed.
- How much fruitThree-quarters of a cup of sieved pulp is somewhere around half a pound of fresh ripe apricots, or a smaller quantity of dried apricots stewed soft in water, or rather less than one drained 15-oz can; measure the pulp rather than the fruit, since yields vary. Sieve rather than blend so no skin or fibre gets in.
- Sweetening"Sweeten if needed" means to taste, and dried apricots need more than canned. Two to four tablespoons of sugar dissolved into the hot pulp is a normal range; a very sweet, slack pulp will give a looser mixture.
- Hot pulp into the whitesThis is the hinge. The pur\ in a thin stream while the beating continues, as the recipe says, rather than dumped in cold, which deflates the foam and leaves a weeping mixture. The stream-of-hot-liquid technique is loosely comparable to Italian meringue, though the pulp is nowhere near syrup temperature.
- Preparing the moldsButter the ramekins, then dust with granulated sugar and tip out the excess. The sugar gives the mixture something to climb and leaves a thin crisp shell.
- The water bathSet the filled molds in a roasting pan and pour in hot water to come halfway up their sides. Nothing in the original says hot, but starting with hot water keeps the total time down.
- TimingNo time is given. Individual molds at 300F take about 25 to 30 minutes; they are done when set at the centre and barely wobbling. Serve at once.
- YieldThree whites beaten stiff make a bulky foam, so the mixture will fill more than four 4-oz ramekins to the three-quarter mark; reckon on four to six small servings depending on mold size.
Fruit souffl\ this kind were standard in Anglo-American cookery from the late nineteenth century onward, and they are closer to a baked meringue than a true custard souffl\ the flavour comes from the fruit and the structure from egg white. Apricots were a natural choice because they were available dried year-round long before they were reliably available fresh, and dried apricot pulp is thick and acidic, both of which help egg foam hold. A dessert built on three egg whites also suited a kitchen with yolks left over from a custard or a mayonnaise, though nothing in the recipe says so. Setting individual molds in a pan of water gave some protection against the uneven heat of coal and gas ranges.