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Chocolate Cream Pie
Fenchonettes au Chocolat. 1 quart of milk. 8 ounces of sugar. 4 ounces of flour. 2 ounces of chocolate grated. 2 ounces of butter. 5 yolks of eggs. 8 whites of eggs and 4 ounces of sugar for meringue, and vanilla to flavor.
Boil the milk with the chocolate in it, and a little of the sugar to prevent burning on the bottom, mix the flour and rest of the sugar thoroughly together dry and beat them into it. Then add the butter and the yolks well beaten and take the mixture immediately from the fire. Bake in thin crusts of puff-paste. Whip the whites of eggs firm while the pies are baking, add the sugar and vanilla; spread over the pies still hot in the oven and bake with the oven door open a few minutes.
A flour-thickened chocolate pastry cream baked in puff-paste shells and finished with meringue. The book's French title, fanchonnettes, is the older name; "chocolate cream pie" is the translation offered to American readers.
- The hinge: cook the flour outA quart of milk thickened with only 4 oz of flour needs to reach a full boil and bubble for a minute or two, or the finished cream tastes pasty. Add the yolks off direct high heat and stir hard so they thicken without scrambling, then take it off as instructed.
- ChocolateTwo ounces of grated chocolate in a book of this period means unsweetened baking chocolate, not a modern sweetened bar. The 8 oz of sugar assumes that; sweetened chocolate will make the cream cloying.
- Guarding the bottomBoiling the milk with a little of the sugar in it does not really prevent scorching. A heavy-bottomed pan, moderate heat and constant stirring do.
- Thin crusts of puff-pasteThese are shallow tartlet shells lined with puff pastry rather than a deep single-crust pie. The recipe simply says to bake the cream in them; if you prefer to part-bake the shells first, prick the bases and weight them, or the paste lifts and pushes the cream out.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe specifies no oven heat. As modern practice, puff paste wants roughly 400-425F to set the layers, and a filled tart only enough heat to set the custard surface, around 350F.
- The meringue and the open doorEight whites to 4 oz sugar is a soft French meringue, and baking with the oven door open is a period way of colouring it gently without cooking the custard further. In a modern oven, use the broiler at a distance or 350F for a few minutes, watching constantly.
- Spread it hotMeringue put on a hot filling sets from beneath and is far less likely to weep or slide off. Do not let the baked shells cool before topping.
- YieldA quart of milk gives roughly 5 cups of pastry cream; how many shells that fills depends entirely on their size.
Fanchonnettes are a nineteenth-century French pastry: small tartlet shells filled with a flavoured pastry cream and capped with meringue. The name is usually explained as a diminutive of Fanchon, itself a familiar form of Françoise, though this is traditional explanation rather than documented fact. They appear in French pastry manuals of the period in flavours such as coffee, vanilla, orange and chocolate. The flour-thickened cream rather than a pure custard gives a filling stable enough to hold a clean cut and to sit through a service without weeping.