Chocolate Icing
INGREDIENT for medium-sized cake. lb. of sugar, 3 oz. of chocolate, grated, flavouring of vanilla, a small cupful of water. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Melt over a slow fire, spread the cake, and dry in a cool oven.
Chocolate Soufflé. - INGREDIENTS for moderate-sized soufflé.-4 eggs, 3 teaspoonfuls of pounded sugar, 1 teaspoonful of flour, 3 oz. of the best chocolate. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Break the eggs, separating the whites from the yolks, and put them into different basins; add to the yolks the sugar, flour, and chocolate, which should be very finely grated, and stir these ingredients for 5 minutes. Then well whisk the whites of the eggs in the other basin until they are stiff, and, when firm, mix lightly with the yolks till the whole forms a smooth and light substance; butter a round soufflé or cake-tin, put in the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven from 15 to 20 minutes, Pin a white CLARET CUP. napkin round the tin, strew sifted sugar over the top of the soufflé, and send it immediately to table. The proper appearance of this dish depends entirely on the expedition with which it is served; and some cooks, to preserve its lightness, hold a salamander over the soufflé until it is placed on the table. If allowed to stand after it comes from the oven it will be entirely spoiled, as it falls almost immediately.
TIME.-15 to 20 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two chocolate entries stand together here: a boiled sugar-and-chocolate icing, and a flourless-in-all-but-name chocolate soufflé. Both are workable, but the icing depends on sugar temperature rather than on the timings given.
- The sugar weightThe quantity for the icing is given only as "lb. of sugar" with the fraction missing, so it cannot be read with confidence. For a medium cake against 3 oz of chocolate, half a pound is the plausible reading; treat any figure as a starting point and judge by consistency.
- "Melt over a slow fire"This is a sugar-and-water icing rather than a butter frosting: the sugar is dissolved with the chocolate and cooked gently until it will just coat the cake. The original gives no stage and no temperature, so judge by consistency — thin enough to spread, thick enough not to soak in.
- "Dry in a cool oven"About 200-250F, or the residual warmth of an oven just switched off, with the door ajar. The point is to set a crust on the icing, not to bake it further.
- The chocolate"The best chocolate" here means a hard, plain block of eating or cooking chocolate; its sweetness varied by maker and cannot be pinned down against modern bars. A 60-70 per cent dark chocolate, grated fine, is a reasonable modern match. Grating rather than chopping helps in the soufflé, where the chocolate has to disperse into the yolk mixture without being melted first.
- Moderate oven350F for the soufflé. Fifteen to twenty minutes in a buttered tin of about 6 inches suits four eggs; the centre should still be soft when it goes to table.
- Sugar in the souffléThree teaspoonfuls of pounded sugar is very little by modern taste; pounded sugar was loaf sugar crushed fine, roughly answering to caster or fine granulated. If the chocolate is unsweetened the mixture will be close to bitter.
- The salamanderA salamander was a flat iron disc on a handle, heated red and held above food to glaze or hold heat. A grill element on its lowest setting does the same job, but the real instruction is the one Beeton repeats: carry the soufflé straight from oven to table.
- YieldThe icing covers one 7-8 inch cake. The soufflé serves three to four as a light pudding.
Boiled and syrup-based sugar icings of this kind were a common finish for English cakes through the nineteenth century, well before butter creams became usual; the cook made a sugar syrup, worked in flavouring, spread it while warm and dried it in a falling oven so that it set to a firm shell. Chocolate as a cake covering was still comparatively new in Beeton's lifetime — moulded solid eating chocolate began to be sold in Britain from around the middle of the century — and grated block chocolate remained a usual kitchen form for decades afterwards. The average costs quoted in pence, alongside time and seasonality, are among the features for which the Book of Household Management is best known: sixpence for enough icing to cover a whole cake was real money in a household budget but not extravagant.