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Naples Biscuit
1 pound flour. 1 pound sugar. 12 whites, and 10 yolks of eggs. 2 glasses wine. The should gradually harden in the oven till quite crisp, and be frequently turned in the pans.
A terse nineteenth-century formula for a sponge biscuit of the ladyfinger family. Nearly all the method is missing, and what survives is mostly about the drying, which is the part that matters.
- The hinge: it is dried, not bakedThe hinge: it is dried more than baked -- "gradually harden in the oven till quite crisp" is the whole technique. The recipe gives no temperature; in a modern oven a low heat works, baking until set and pale, then leaving them to dry out further in a barely warm oven so they keep. Browned and soft in the centre means they were baked too hot and too fast.
- "Frequently turned in the pans"This may mean shifting the pans within an unevenly heated oven, or turning the biscuits themselves in the pans; the text does not settle it. In a modern oven, rotate the sheets once or twice and swap racks; turning the biscuits late in the drying helps the undersides crisp.
- WeightsA pound of flour is about 3½ cups scooped, 4 cups sifted; a pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups. Weighing at 454g each is far more reliable here, since the batter has no other structure to fall back on.
- "2 glasses wine" is ambiguousA wine glass in period cookbooks is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, giving roughly ½ cup total, but the book does not say and the glass could be larger. Madeira or sherry is the likely intent.
- EggsTwelve whites to ten yolks, at modern large-egg size, is roughly 1½ cups of white and a generous ½ to ¾ cup of yolk. The surplus whites would tend to give the lift and the dry, crisp crumb.
- No leavening, so the beating is everythingBeat the yolks with part of the sugar until pale and thick, whip the whites with the rest to firm peaks, fold the two together, then fold in the flour and wine in alternating additions. Overmixing at the flour stage collapses the batter and the biscuits bake flat and tough.
- ShapingThe recipe does not say; it mentions only pans. If piping fingers, make them three to four inches long and well apart. A dusting of sugar before baking is often used for a pearled crust.
- Yield and useThis is a large batch, on the order of six to eight dozen fingers. Store them airtight once fully cold; they are meant for soaking in wine or cream in trifles and puddings rather than eating out of hand.
Naples biscuit is the English-language name for a hard, dried sponge finger of the same family as the Italian savoiardi and the French biscuit à la cuillère. The name is usually linked to the southern Italian trade in such keeping-biscuits, though this is traditional explanation rather than documented derivation. English and American cookbooks from the eighteenth century onward call for them frequently, usually as a component rather than a treat: crumbled into custards and puddings, layered into trifles, or soaked in wine at the base of a charlotte. That may be why the instructions here are so thin: a reader was assumed to know how a sponge batter was raised, and what the page supplies is the difficult part, the slow hardening in a cooling oven that turned a soft cake into something that would keep in a tin.