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Cold Cheese Soufflé
Ingredients.
One and a half ounces of Gruyère Cheese.
One and a half ounces of Parmesan.
Half a pint of Cream.
One gill of Aspic Jelly.
This entry gives quantities only, in the terse style of a cookery-school notebook where the method was demonstrated rather than written. Everything below is about reading those four lines correctly and assembling them the way a cold souffl",
- The measures are imperialHalf a pint is 10 fl oz (about 1¼ US cups) of cream; a gill in a British book of this period is 5 fl oz, half of that half-pint. If you work from US measures you will be roughly a sixth short on both.
- What the cream must beWhat the cream probably is -- "Cream" here is likely a rich cream of the sort now sold as double cream (modern UK minimum 48% butterfat), and the method almost certainly called for it whipped to a soft peak that holds its shape but still folds. Modern US heavy cream at 36% will whip, but the set will be looser and more dependent on the aspic.
- Aspic jellyA clarified savoury stock set with gelatine, made separately and kept in the larder. It must be liquid but cold and beginning to thicken to a syrup when it goes in; poured warm it will melt the cream, poured set it will streak the mixture with rubbery flecks.
- Grate the cheese to dustGrate the cheese finely -- Both cheeses want the finest grating you can manage so they disperse rather than sit in the cream as grains.
- There is no cookingDespite the name, nothing is baked; the recipe gives no method at all. A cold souffle of this kind would be folded together, chilled until firm, and turned out or served in the tin. Any seasoning, tin size or paper collar is reconstruction, as the four lines specify none.
The savoury was a fixture of the late-Victorian and Edwardian British dinner, a small sharp mouthful served after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, and cheese in some worked-up form was among its familiar expressions.