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Cherry Souffle
Moisten two tablespoons of flour with a little cold milk, then stir it smoothly into one pint of hot milk. Let it thicken over the fire, then set aside to get cool.
Beat the yolks of four eggs light, add two tablespoons of softened butter, a pinch of nutmeg and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Mix in with the thickened milk. Add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth, one pint of stoned, drained cherries and a gill of thick sweet cream.
Flavor with vanilla. Turn into a souffle tin and bake in a quick oven. Serve at once.-M. F. Snider. -
A thick milk-and-flour base lightened with beaten whites — closer to a pudding-souffle than the classic French kind, which is why it tolerates a pint of fruit. Two things in the original need attention before you start: there is no sugar listed, and no baking time.
- The missing sugarAs written the batter is unsweetened, which is almost certainly an omission rather than intent — the vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon all point to a sweet dish. Figure 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar beaten into the yolks, more if the cherries are sour ones.
- A gillHalf a cup. "Thick sweet cream" means unsoured heavy cream, as opposed to the soured cream that turns up in other recipes of the period.
- Quick ovenUsually taken to mean somewhere around 400-425F. That is workable for the first few minutes but will scorch the top long before a fruit-laden souffle sets through; a moderate oven, around 375F for 30 to 40 minutes, gives a better result, and the centre should be just set rather than dry.
- Cool the base fullyThe thickened milk must be cold, or at most tepid, before the yolks and butter go in. Warm base plus beaten whites means a deflated souffle.
- Drain the cherries hardStoned cherries, whether fresh or canned, carry a great deal of juice, and juice is what makes this collapse into a soggy layer. Drain them on a towel and pat dry. Sour cherries suit the dish better than sweet.
- FoldingFold the whites in first, then the cherries and cream, using as few strokes as will combine them. Adding a pint of fruit after the whites deflates less than stirring it into the base.
- The tinThe recipe does not give a size; you want a straight-sided dish generous enough to take the batter with room to rise. Butter it and dust with sugar so the batter can climb, and fill no more than three-quarters full.
- Serve at onceNot a flourish but a necessity — this has no gelatine or cornstarch beyond the flour panade and will sink within a few minutes of leaving the oven. Serves six.
Good Housekeeping, founded in 1885, built much of its cookery content from readers' contributions, which is why so many recipes in its collected cook book carry a name attached. The dish belongs to a distinctly American branch of the souffle family: a flour-thickened milk base, stiffened enough to carry a pint of whole fruit. The cherries would most likely have been sour Morellos or Montmorencies, either fresh in a short July season or put up in jars — hence the instruction to stone and drain them, a step that assumes fruit sitting in its own syrup.