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Cheese Puffs with Anchovy Butter
Ramequins a l' Italienne. 1/2 pint of milk or water. 2 ounces of butter. 4 ounces of flour. 4 ounces of cheese. 6 eggs. Salt.
Make the past of milk, butter and flour, as for cream puffs, and mix in the cheese--previously grated or minced--by pounding smooth while hot. Add the eggs one at a time. Place on the baking pans in small oblong shapes, and bake carefully. They are not good if in the least dark colored. Makes about 30. For filling, mix 4 ounces of fresh butter with 6 tablespoonfuls of essence of anchovies, both slightly warmed, and then made cold before using. The English ruralists are great at making cheese-cakes in variety. A kind of tart made of sweet milk or cream curd is the genuine sort, and holds about the same relative importance at the well-provided tables of the better class that pumpkin pies do on this side. The scarcity of English culinary terms, however, has made cheesecake a name expansive enough to take in a number of French knick-knacks, such as the following, which only come in turn because they are cream curd puffs.
Nothing can be made of milk curd, successfully, unless the curd be scalded to firmness so that it can be pressed dry; a point that our receipts, as we find them, hardly ever mention. Curdle the milk or cream with rennet as if for cheese; then set the pan on the range and slowly come to the boiling point. Pour off the whey and hang up the curd in a napkin to drip dry, and then slightly press it. That is what is meant by "well-prepared, firm curd," and a number of good things, to be described at some other time, can be made of it without fear of disappointment.
This is choux paste with cheese beaten in — a gougère in all but name — piped into small oblongs and filled with anchovy butter once cool. The rambling paragraph about milk curd at the end belongs to the cheesecake discussion that follows in the book, not to these puffs.
- The measuresHalf a pint is 1 cup of milk or water; 2 ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Flour and cheese at 4 ounces each are weights, not cups — 4 ounces of flour is close to a full cup, and 4 ounces of grated hard cheese about 1 packed cup.
- Six eggs is a ceiling, not a ruleFour ounces of flour will not usually carry six modern large eggs. Beat them in one at a time and stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon and holds a piped ridge; two or three eggs past that point and the shapes will spread flat.
- Add the cheese while hotThe instruction to pound the grated cheese in while the paste is hot matters: the residual heat softens it into the dough so it disperses evenly. Cheese added after the eggs sits in lumps and leaks out in the oven.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature, only 'bake carefully' and the warning that they are spoiled if in the least dark colored. One modern way to meet that: start at 400-425F for about 15 minutes for the lift, then drop to about 350F for another 15-20 to dry the insides, since a steady hot oven tends to brown the cheese before the centers set.
- Essence of anchoviesA thin Victorian bottled sauce, salty and strongly flavored. Anchovy paste from a tube is the nearest thing, but it is far more concentrated: begin with 1 to 2 tablespoons to 4 ounces of butter and taste, rather than the six tablespoons given.
- Working the butterWarming both butter and essence only far enough to blend, then chilling before use, keeps the mixture emulsified. If it splits, chill and beat again rather than adding more heat.
- Filling and timingSplit or pierce the puffs and fill only shortly before serving; the moist filling will soften the pastry as it stands.
- YieldAbout 30 small puffs, which is a plate of hot savouries for eight to ten people alongside drinks.
Ramequins in nineteenth-century French usage meant small cheese pastries — the word later slid over to the little dish they were often baked in, which is why a modern ramekin is a vessel rather than a food. The Italian tag on the name is loose; what the recipe actually describes is the cheese-enriched choux that survives in Burgundy as gougère. The author's aside is the more revealing part of the page: he is annoyed that English cookery lumps genuine curd cheesecakes together with every small cheese pastry of French origin, and he uses the occasion to insist that milk curd be scalded and pressed dry before use, a step he says his source receipts routinely omit. Anchovy essence, the bottled sauce called for in the filling, was a standard English store-cupboard item of the period, used the way cooks now reach for anchovy paste or Worcestershire — a savoury note in an era when hot savouries closed a formal dinner after the sweet course. </invoke>