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Soufflé
Ingredients.
One gill of Milk or Cream.
Half an ounce of Gelatine.
One gill of Apricot Purée, or One gill of Orange-juice.
Yolks of three Eggs.
Whites of four Eggs.
Two ounces of Sugar.
A little Lemon-juice.
A few drops of Cochincal.
Put the milk and gelatine into a stewpan, and stir over the fire until dissolved, care being taken that it does not boil, or it will curdle; beat the three yolks of eggs well and add to the milk.
When well mixed, put into a stewpan and stir till it thickens it must not boil; add the sugar.
Then pour out into a basin, add the apricot purée, lemon-juice, and cochineal. Beat the four whites of eggs to a very stiff froth, and add them to the other ingredients, stirring lightly but thoroughly.
Stir until nearly cold before putting it into a mould. The mould should be ornamented with bright pale jelly.
Riz à l'Impératrice.
Ingredients.
Quarter of a pint of clear Jelly.
One ounce of preserved Cherries.
Half an ounce of Angelica.
Quarter of a pound of Rice.
One quart of Milk.
Half a pint of whipped Cream.
Half an ounce of Gelatine.
Quarter of a pound of Castor Sugar.
Vanilla. Set a mould with the jelly, cherries, and angelica. Stew the rice tender in the milk, and when cool add the cream, gelatine melted in a little water, sugar, and vanilla. Turn this preparation into the decorated mould and set on ice. When quite cold, turn the rice out carefully and pour round a purée of apricots.
Two cold moulded sweets share this page: a gelatine-set "soufflé" (cold, never baked) and Riz à l'Impératrice. Both are sound in outline, but the soufflé depends on four raw egg whites that are never heated at any stage.
- Why the cautionThe yolks are cooked into a light custard, but the four whites are whisked raw and folded into a mixture that is then only chilled. Nothing in the method takes the whites anywhere near a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and a gelatine set holds them at fridge temperature for a day or more. If you want a cold soufflé, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg white or a cooked meringue.
- GillThis is a British book, so a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint — 5 fl oz, about 150 ml. Not the American half-cup.
- GelatineHalf an ounce is about 14 g, roughly a tablespoon and a half of modern powdered gelatine, or seven to eight leaves depending on the brand's sheet weight. Victorian gelatine varied in strength and modern gelatine is standardised, so the original quantity errs firm.
- The custard"It must not boil" is the hinge of the first recipe. An egg-yolk custard thickens around 80C and curdles not far above; the gelatine is also degraded by a hard boil. Stir over gentle heat until it coats the back of a spoon.
- CochinealSpelled "Cochincal" in the original. It is carmine, the red colouring made from the cochineal insect, still sold as E120 — a few drops here are purely to tint the apricot or orange mixture pink. Any red food colour does the same job; it is not an insect-free ingredient if that matters to you.
- Setting a mouldThe souffle's mould is to be "ornamented with bright pale jelly": a thin layer of clear, pale sweet jelly set in a chilled mould so the pattern shows when turned out. The rice is moulded the same way but with the cherries and angelica set into the jelly. Angelica is candied angelica stem, still sold by cake-decorating suppliers; candied citron or other candied peel is often substituted.
- Riz à l'Impératrice proportionsA quarter pound (115 g) of pudding rice to a quart (1.1 litres) of milk gives a very loose, slow-stewed rice; expect 40 minutes or more of gentle cooking, and cool it thoroughly before the cream goes in or the cream will slacken. Half an ounce of gelatine again, dissolved in a little water and stirred in warm but not hot.
- YieldNeither is stated. Both are moulded sweets of the size that would serve roughly six; judge the mould by the volume of the finished mixture rather than by a fixed figure.
The "souffle" here is what later cookery books came to call a cold or iced souffle: no oven, no roux, just a light custard, fruit puree and whisked whites suspended in gelatine, the name coming from its being set high in a mould or paper-collared case to stand above the rim like the baked kind. Riz a l'Imperatrice is the more famous of the pair -- a moulded rice cream with candied fruit that appears in nineteenth-century French patisserie and is traditionally said to honour the Empress Eugenie, though the attribution is customary rather than documented. Both are cold turned-out moulds of the kind a kitchen with an ice chest could produce, and the decorated jelly lining, the cherries and the angelica were as much of the point as the flavour.