Éclairs
INGREDIENTS.-2 oz. of butter, 1 dessertspoonful of white sugar, 3 eggs, 1/2 pint of water, 1/2 lb. of flour, vanilla flavouring. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Boil the butter and water together, and stir in enough flour to make the mixture thick enough to leave the sides of the saucepan, then add the yolks of the eggs and beat well. When cold, add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth, with the flavouring. Bake either in strips or round cakes in a moderate oven. When cold, they may be glazed with chocolate or other icing, and a slit may be made to hold some whipped and flavoured cream.
TIME. About 15 minutes to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
This is choux paste for éclairs, the title mangled by the scanner from "ÉCLAIRS." The method is sound in outline but the proportions and the oven directions both need attention before it will work.
- The hinge: the paste must be dried outAfter stirring in the flour, keep the pan over the heat and beat until the paste comes away cleanly from the sides and films the base of the pan, about two minutes. Underdried paste will not take up the eggs properly and the shells collapse.
- The proportions are flour-heavyHalf a pound of flour to half an imperial pint of water (10 fl oz / about 285 ml) and only 3 eggs gives a much stiffer paste than modern choux, which uses roughly two-thirds of that flour weight and four or five eggs to the same liquid. Expect a dense, bready éclair; hold back some flour and add a further egg if you want the hollow, crisp shell people now look for.
- Butter2 oz butter to 10 fl oz water is lean by current standards — 4 oz is usual. Less fat means a tougher shell that browns slowly.
- Separating the eggsBeating the whites separately to a froth is a Victorian habit and does little useful here; choux rises on steam, not on whipped air, and most of the foam is beaten out as the whites are worked into the stiff paste. Beat the whole eggs in one at a time instead.
- "Moderate oven" is wrong for chouxModerate meant about 350F (180C). Éclairs need a hot start — 400-425F (200-220C) — to generate the steam that puffs them, and can then be dropped to 350F to dry through.
- Fifteen minutes is far too shortÉclair shells of any size need 25-35 minutes total. Pulled at 15 minutes they are pale and damp inside and will sag within a minute of leaving the oven. Do not open the door for the first 20 minutes.
- Pierce and dryWhen they are firm and deep gold, make a small hole in one end and return them to a turned-off oven for 5-10 minutes so the inside steam escapes. The recipe's slit for cream is best cut once they are cold.
- Yield and costThe quantity makes roughly 18-24 éclairs about 4 in long, or a similar number of round buns. The '6d' is the original period costing for the whole batch, of no use now beyond showing how cheap the dish was.
Choux paste is among the oldest of the cooked pastes in the French repertoire; the usual account traces it to sixteenth-century Italian and French court kitchens, though that story is traditional rather than documented. It took something like its modern form in the nineteenth century, and Carême and his successors are credited with its refinement and its use for gougères, croquembouche and the like. The éclair proper -- a finger of choux, filled with cream and glazed on top -- belongs to nineteenth-century Parisian pâtisserie, and English cookery books had taken it up by the time Mrs Beeton's name was being attached to comprehensive household volumes at the turn of the century. The instruction here to fill with 'whipped and flavoured cream' rather than pastry cream is common in English books, whereas French practice leans to a crème pâtissière.