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Chocolate Charlotte
Whites of 5 eggs 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water Boil the sugar, water and chocolate until a thin syrup is formed; remove from the fire; fold in the beaten whites; add flavoring and bake until the eggs are set. Serve cold with custard sauce.
A baked meringue enriched with chocolate syrup, closer to a soufflé than to a true charlotte. The original omits both oven temperature and time, so the notes below fill the gaps.
- The hinge: syrup temperature"A thin syrup" is vague, and the recipe gives no guidance. In period candy terminology thin syrup sits a little below the thread stage, in the low 220s F on a modern thermometer. Boiled much further, the syrup risks stiffening the whites into grainy lumps; boiled too little, it may slacken them so the mixture never sets.
- Fold, or pour?The instruction to fold hot syrup into beaten whites works best if you treat it as an Italian meringue: pour the syrup down the side of the bowl in a thin stream while beating, rather than dumping and folding. The whites should be at stiff peaks before the syrup goes in.
- Unsweetened chocolateTwo ounces means two squares of baking chocolate, 100 percent cacao and no sugar. Substituting semi-sweet or bittersweet will make the finished dish cloying, since the cup of sugar is already carrying it.
- OvenBake in a buttered mold or individual ramekins set in a pan of hot water at 300-325F. A hotter oven will puff and crack the surface, then collapse it.
- "Until the eggs are set"Allow 35-45 minutes for a single mold, 20-25 for ramekins. It is done when the center is firm to a light touch and a knife inserted at the edge comes out clean; it will still be slightly quivery in the middle and firms as it cools.
- Cooling and servingCool in the mold, then chill. The dessert deflates noticeably as it cools, which is expected. Unmold onto a cold plate.
- Custard sauceThe book gives no recipe for it. A boiled custard of the period, what would now be called crème anglaise -- milk, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla stirred over low heat to about 175F -- is the likely intention, and the five yolks left from this recipe would be enough for it.
- YieldFive whites and a cup of sugar make enough for six modest servings, or four generous ones.
A charlotte in its older sense is a molded dessert lined with bread, sponge fingers or cake, and this one has none of that; by the early twentieth century American cookbooks seem often to have used the name loosely for almost any cold molded sweet, especially those set with beaten whites or whipped cream. What the recipe actually describes is the technique behind Italian meringue, hot sugar syrup beaten into whites, which gives a stable foam that will hold its volume through baking without any flour, butter or yolks. That economy is the point: five whites, a cup of sugar and two squares of chocolate produce a substantial dessert while reserving the yolks for the custard sauce served alongside, so nothing from the eggs is wasted.