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Cheese Aigrettes
Ingredients.
Half a pint of cold Water.
One ounce of Butter.
Four ounces of Vienna Flour, sifted.
Three ounces of Parmesan Cheese.
Two whole Eggs and one Yolk.
Cayenne and Salt to taste.
Dry the flour in the oven and rub it through a sieve; put the water and butter on to boil; when boiling add the flour; stir vigorously all the time on the fire until the panada leaves the sides of the pan quite clean. Remove from the fire, and when slightly cooled add the eggs, one by one, the seasoning, and lastly the cheese; put on a plate to cool. Take a small piece of the mixture in a teaspoon, drop it into hot but not quite boiling fat, and fry a nice brown. Serve on a napkin, with grated Parmesan sprinkled over them.
A choux paste enriched with Parmesan and fried in spoonfuls — the Edwardian savoury course in its most compact form. Two things decide the outcome: how dry you get the paste, and how restrained you are with the fat temperature.
- Fat temperature is the hinge"Hot but not quite boiling" seems to mean a moderate fat, perhaps 340-350F (170-175C), though the author gives no figure. Aigrettes need to swell and set through as they cook; fat hot enough to brown them fast leaves the centres raw and they collapse or burst.
- The measuresHalf a pint here is an imperial pint's half, 10 fl oz (about 285 ml), against 4 oz (115 g) flour. That is a wetter ratio than modern choux, so be prepared to dry the paste out well over the heat, and to work in a little extra flour if it will not leave the sides of the pan cleanly.
- Vienna flourA finely milled, fairly strong white flour of Austro-Hungarian type, sold widely in Britain at the time. Plain all-purpose flour works; a spoonful or two of bread flour in the mix gives the slightly stronger paste the original assumed.
- Drying the flourThe recipe gives neither time nor temperature, only "dry the flour in the oven" and sieve it. Packaged flour today is dry enough that this step is optional, though it does no harm and makes the sieving easier.
- PanadaThe old word for the cooked flour-and-water paste before the eggs go in. Keep stirring over the heat until a film forms on the pan base and the mass rolls into a ball.
- Cooling before the eggsLet the paste drop to lukewarm — hot paste scrambles the egg and the aigrettes will not rise. Beat each egg in until fully absorbed before adding the next.
- Cheese last, for a reasonCheese last -- The cheese goes in after the eggs; melted into a hotter paste it can make the mixture oily. Grate it finely so it disperses without weighing the mixture down, and go carefully with the salt — Parmesan brings plenty.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin on the dish absorbed frying fat at table. Drain on kitchen paper first, then transfer, and serve straight away: aigrettes deflate within minutes.
- YieldTeaspoon-sized pieces give upwards of thirty small fritters, depending on how generously the spoon is filled — enough for six to eight as a savoury or a drinks accompaniment.
Aigrette is French for the egret, and by extension the spray of plumes taken from it for hats and helmets — a fair description of the ragged, spiky puffs the paste throws out in hot fat. Cheese aigrettes belonged to the savoury, the small, sharp, usually salty course served near the end of a formal British dinner, a habit that flourished from the mid-Victorian decades through the Edwardian period and had largely disappeared by the middle of the twentieth century. The technique is straight cookery-school French: the same pâte à choux used for profiteroles, seasoned with cayenne and Parmesan and fried rather than baked. Parmesan was a standard grating cheese of such kitchens, imported and long-keeping.