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Six Eggs (Half an ounce of Flour)
Half an ounce of Flour.
Three ounces of Castor Sugar.
Fifteen drops of Essence of Vanilla.
Put four yolks of eggs into a basin, add the castor sugar, and beat with a wooden spoon for ten minutes; then stir in the flour and vanilla; whisk the six whites of eggs to a stiff froth, and mix lightly to the yolks of eggs. Butter a halfpint soufflé-tin, pour in the mixture, and bake in a quick oven for ten minutes; send to table quickly. If jam is used, it must be put in the centre of the soufflé before it is baked. ( 221 )
A plain vanilla soufflé of the Victorian training-school type, written in the shorthand of a cookery class where the tin, the oven and the timing were understood in the room. Two things need translating before it works: the quantities, and the size of the dish.
- The weightsHalf an ounce of flour is about 14 g, roughly two level tablespoons. Three ounces of caster sugar is about 85 g, a generous third of a cup. The flour is there only to stabilise the yolk base, so measure it accurately rather than scooping.
- Fifteen drops of essenceRoughly an eighth of a teaspoon of vanilla extract. The strength of Victorian essences varied, so taste and adjust rather than assuming a fixed equivalent.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400-425F (200-220C). Preheat thoroughly and put the tin on a preheated baking sheet in the lower third, so the base sets fast and drives the rise.
- The half-pint tin is the problemSix stiffly whisked whites plus the yolk base come to something like a quart of foam, far more than one half-pint tin will hold. Read this as a class recipe portioned into several small buttered souffle tins, or use a single 1.5-quart dish and expect closer to 20-25 minutes rather than ten.
- ButteringButter the tins upward in vertical strokes and dust with caster sugar. Sugar rather than flour gives the crisp shell a sweet soufflé wants, and the vertical strokes let it climb.
- Beating the yolksTen minutes with a wooden spoon is three to four minutes in a stand mixer, or five by hand with a whisk. Stop when the mixture is pale and falls in a ribbon that holds a moment on the surface.
- FoldingSlacken the heavy yolk base with a spoonful of the whites first, then fold in the rest in two or three additions. Whisk the whites only to a stiff-but-glossy peak; over-whisked whites break into grains and the soufflé rises unevenly.
- The jamA spoonful of stiff jam buried in the centre will sink toward the base as the mixture inflates. Use a thick preserve, not a runny one, and keep it to a tablespoon or the wet spot will collapse the middle.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six small soufflés or one dish serving four. "Send to table quickly" is the whole instruction that matters: it starts falling within two or three minutes of leaving the oven.
Souffles were a set piece of late nineteenth-century English cookery schools, where French technique was taught to middle-class women and to the professional cooks who would work for them. The name comes from the French for "blown" or "puffed", and the dish depends chiefly on whipped egg white and heat. The heading here, giving the egg count and the flour weight before anything else, follows the habit of training manuals of listing proportions first. A recipe built on four yolks, six whites and half an ounce of flour is a proportion exercise as much as a dessert, and the closing note about jam is a common way such books turned one lesson into several dishes.