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Cheese Aigrettes
INGREDIENTS. 2 eggs, with yolk of a third.
A few grains of cayenne and salt. 2 ounces (¼ a cup) of grated Parmesan cheese.
Hot fat.
Method. - Boil the water and butter, sift in the flour with the salt and cayenne; stir and cook until the mixture cleaves from the side of the pan.
When the mixture has slightly cooled, add the eggs, one at a time, beating in each egg thoroughly before another is added. Lastly, add the cheese. Drop, by teaspoonfuls, into hot fat and fry a golden brown. Drain on soft paper and serve piled on a folded napkin.
Cheese d'Artois.
INGREDIENTS. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
White of 1 egg.
Yolks of 2 eggs.
Salt and paprica. 2 ounces of grated Parmesan cheese. ¼ a pound of plain or puff paste.
Method. - Cream the butter, beat in the eggs, and add the cheese with a few grains, each, of salt and paprica. Roll the pastry very thin and cut it into two rectangular pieces; lay one of these on a baking-sheet and spread with the cheese mixture; cover this with the second piece of pastry. Score with a knife in strips one inch wide and about three inches long, brush over with beaten egg, and bake about fifteen minutes. Cut out the strips while hot. Serve at once, or reheat before serving.
Cheese aigrettes are savoury choux puffs fried rather than baked; the second entry on the page, Cheese d'Artois, is a pastry sandwich of the same cheese mixture. Both were meant as a savoury course or an accompaniment to salad.
- Missing quantitiesThe aigrette method calls for water, butter and flour, but none of the three appears in the ingredient list, so the paste cannot be scaled from this page as printed. Standard choux proportions from any current source will be needed; the cheese, eggs and seasoning as given here can then be worked in.
- "14 a cup" and "14 a pound"These are printed fractions garbled in the scan, a quarter or a half. Note that two ounces of grated Parmesan is nearer half a cup than a quarter, so the cup figure cannot be squared with the stated weight; the pastry is a quarter (or half) pound.
- The hinge: dry the pasteCook the flour paste until it visibly pulls away from the pan and leaves a film on the base. Underdried paste absorbs fat and collapses instead of puffing.
- Egg temperature"Slightly cooled" means about blood heat. Added to a paste still near boiling, the eggs scramble; added cold, the paste stiffens and the eggs will not beat in smoothly.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat". Around 350-360F suits: aigrettes need time for the interior to set and expand, and fat much hotter than that will colour them before the centre is cooked.
- Frying in batchesThey roughly triple in size and need room to turn. Six or eight teaspoonfuls at a time in a deep pan is enough; crowding drops the fat temperature and gives greasy puffs.
- ParmesanGrate it fresh from a wedge. Pre-grated cheese is drier and often carries an anti-caking agent, which can dull the flavour.
- Oven for the d'ArtoisNo temperature is given. Puff or plain paste of this thinness wants a hot oven, 400-425F, for the fifteen minutes stated. Score the strips before baking as directed, then cut through while hot or the pastry shatters.
Aigrette is French for an egret's plume, and by extension the spray of feathers worn in a hat; the application of the name to these puffs is often explained by the way fried choux erupts into irregular points as it cooks, though that account is traditional rather than documented. Fried choux under various names was a staple of the late nineteenth-century savoury course, the small salted dish served after the sweet in Anglo-American formal dining, and Parmesan was the usual cheese. The Cheese d'Artois that follows carries a name variously traced to the French province of Artois and to the Comte d'Artois, a point that remains unsettled; it is one of a family of nineteenth-century pastry names attached to strips of paste with a filling between two layers, and sweet versions filled with jam appear in the same period.