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Cocoanut Pudding Souffle
1 quart of milk. 6 ounces of sugar. 3 ounces of corn starch. 1 ounce of butter. 1/2 pound of grated or desicated cocoanut. 12 whites of eggs, (10 or 12 ounces). Rose and lemon flavoring. Set the milk on to boil. Mix the starch and sugar together dry; drop them at once into the boiling milk; stir up rapidly. As soon as it becomes thick beat in the butter then the cocoanut, take it off the fire and let it cool, but not set firm. Then beat the whites to a firm froth. Beat up the pudding mixture, stir in the whites add flavoring and bake about ten minutes in the usual manner, either in cups, shells, cases or in one round mould. Powdered sugar on top. This is a case of conscience. A little way back tipsy pudding was placed close after Savarin pudding and called its first cousin. and now there is a fear that good old Brillat-Savarin may be dishonored by its being called his, as if it were all the same and as if he had been a tipsy man. Don't. Names are cheap; use some other. Brillat-Savarin was well-disposed towards cooks, as was also Lever, the elder Dumas and Thackeray, each after his own manner. You, reader, would make the tipsy pudding so excellently that the great advocate of gastronomy would but smile indulgently, but suppose that down there where bad hotels exist some poor fellow following your example of license should make it inferentially appear that Savarin was fond of sheets of cake saturated with horrible corn-juice whisky, and a turpentinish flavor of rancid lemon oil put up in a village drug store. Don't mix names; or if you must, take a slice of fine white bread and pour pure milk over it, and call that Savarin pudding. He would agree with us; bread and milk pure and simple is glorious in comparison. One of Savarin's ideal dinners, a Barmacide feast which he spreads on paper, and which is to "rive, every guest's attention," at which "the faces of all; one after another, are seen to beam with an ecstasy of enjoyment, the perfect repose of bliss," finishes with a pyramid of vanilla and rose meringue cake--a test sometimes useless, unless in the case of ladies, abbes, etc." What then, amongst the various article to which such a description might apply was this pyramid of vanilla and rose mer ngue-cake appearing at the end of dinner, if not something like these next described?
A peculiarity about the meringue puddings next following (or call them meringue cakes as Savarin did, if you like), is that it takes a good pastry cook to make them successfully; but then they have the advantage of not being too common. They are not such as one would want to make every day; yet they are rich, elegant, ornamental and can be served either cold or hot, whole on the table or in individual portions. They consist of three distinct parts; the cake bottom the cream layer in the middle and the ornamental meringue on top; yet the first specimen being well made the half dozen others, all different, can be put through by the same methods, and the first trouble is not lost.
A starch-thickened coconut base lightened with a dozen egg whites — closer to what we would call a pudding soufflé than to a true soufflé, since the cornstarch makes it forgiving. The hinge is the temperature of the base when the whites go in: warm and slack, never set.
- Weights, not cupsThe book measures by ounce: 6 oz sugar is about 3/4 cup, 3 oz cornstarch about 2/3 cup, 1 oz butter is 2 tablespoons, and 1/2 lb coconut runs 2 1/2 to 3 cups loosely packed. A quart of milk is 4 cups.
- Twelve whitesThe parenthetical 10 or 12 ounces is the real instruction. Modern large whites run a little over an ounce each, so twelve of them weigh somewhat more than the book allows; go by the weight rather than the count.
- Cooling the base"Cool, but not set firm" is the whole trick. If the cornstarch base chills to a solid it will not accept the whites without deflating them; hold it lukewarm and beat it smooth again before folding.
- CocoanutNineteenth-century desiccated coconut was unsweetened. Use unsweetened shredded or grated coconut, or the sugar will run high; if only sweetened flake is available, cut the 6 oz of sugar by about a third.
- Rose and lemon flavoringRose water, not rose extract — a teaspoon or so, added off the heat since the aroma is volatile. For lemon, grated zest is truer than the drugstore oil the author complains about a few lines later.
- "The usual manner"The book gives no oven temperature and leaves the phrase unglossed. Butter the dishes and dust them with sugar. The recipe allows about ten minutes whether baked in cups, shells, cases or in one round mould; a single large mould will in practice take longer.
- ServingThe recipe says only "powdered sugar on top". Send it to the table promptly, though the cornstarch base makes it less liable to collapse than a flourless souffle. The quantity is large: a quart of milk and a dozen whites will fill upwards of eight individual cups.
The recipe sits in a chapter where the author is arguing with himself about names, and the digression is the more interesting half of the page: he reproves his own earlier placement of tipsy pudding, a cake soaked in cheap whisky and drugstore lemon oil, after Savarin pudding — "this is a case of conscience." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, whose Physiologie du Gout appeared in 1825, was by the end of the nineteenth century a name American caterers borrowed freely. The pyramid of vanilla and rose meringue cake he quotes points forward to the meringue puddings that follow in the book — a reminder that rose water, not vanilla alone, was still a standard confectioner's flavouring. Desiccated coconut belongs to the same moment: imported shredded coconut became cheap and widely available in American groceries in the last quarter of the century, and pastry books filled up with coconut puddings, pies and macaroons.