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Three Eggs (Ounces of Parmesan Cheese)
Three ounces of Parmesan Cheese, grated.
Fry the mignonette pepper in the butter for two or three minutes; then strain the butter into a stewpan; add the flour, a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, and a little cayenne, also the milk, and stir over the fire till it thickens.
When a little cool, add, one at a time, two yolks of eggs; beat this all well together and add the cheese; whip the three whites of eggs to a stiff froth, and stir in lightly to the cheese mixture.
Pour into a pint soufflé-tin, previously buttered and lined outside with buttered paper coming two inches above the tin, and bake in a quick oven from twenty to thirty minutes. To serve, take off the paper and fold a clean napkin round the tin but send it to table as quickly as possible, as it will fall as soon as it leaves the oven.
A late-Victorian cheese soufflé, printed here as a continuation of an ingredient list that has been cut off at the top — the butter, flour and milk quantities belong to the missing lines. For a pint tin, a panada of about 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour and 1/4 pint (scant 2/3 cup) milk is the standard proportion of the period and matches the three eggs and 3 oz cheese given.
- Missing quantitiesAs printed, the recipe names butter, flour and milk without amounts. Do not guess wildly: the ratio above is the conventional one for a pint mould, and any well-made béchamel base of that size will carry the cheese and eggs.
- Mignonette pepperCoarsely cracked pepper, usually white; the name is traditionally explained by a resemblance to mignonette seed. It is fried in the butter to perfume it and then strained out, so the finished soufflé has no gritty specks — do not skip the straining.
- Quick ovenConventionally rendered as roughly 400–425F. A soufflé of this size wants a high heat to set the outside and drive the rise; 20 to 30 minutes is plausible for a pint tin, but check at 20.
- Seasoning scaleA full teaspoonful of salt plus half a teaspoonful of pepper is heavy against 3 oz of Parmesan, which is already salty. Half a teaspoon of salt is closer to modern palates.
- Two yolks, three whitesProbably intentional rather than a misprint: the extra white gives lift without extra richness. Add the yolks off the heat and only when the panada has cooled a little, or they will scramble.
- The paper collarButtered paper standing two inches above the rim supports the soufflé as it climbs past the tin. Parchment tied with string does the same job; the recipe has you strip the paper off just before the napkin goes round the tin, then send it in at once.
- Folding the whitesThe hinge of the dish. Beat to a stiff but not dry froth, loosen the cheese base with a spoonful of white first, then fold the rest in with as few strokes as will combine it.
- Yield and timingA pint tin serves two as a savoury course, or four in the small portions the Victorian savoury was meant to be. The instruction to send it to table at once is literal — plan the rest of the meal around the oven, not the reverse.
This belongs to the savoury, the small hot dish that closed a formal English dinner after the sweet and before dessert — a course traditionally said to exist to leave a savoury taste in the mouth for the wine that followed. Cheese soufflés, ramekins and anchovy toasts were among its stock in trade, and books of "high class cookery" published for the professional or aspiring household cook carried numbers of them. The technique is French in origin, the word soufflé meaning simply "blown" or "puffed", and soufflés entered English cookery books in the nineteenth century. Parmesan was one of the usual choices, being dry enough to grate fine. The frank warning that the soufflé will fall as soon as it leaves the oven shows how little time the cook had to get the dish to the table.