Individual
Prepare the custard preceding with the best French chocolate and useless vanilla extract. Pour the custard in cups, place them in a steamer and steam fifteen minutes, taking care they do not become cooked enough to curdle. Pile the meringue on top while they are still hot, set the cups in a baking pan and bake the tops very slightly. They may also be cooked by setting in a pan of water in the oven, but with more injury to the cups than by steaming. In a guessing class when it comes to guessing flavors, they always slip up in trying to guess what gives caramel creams and custards such a pleasant taste.
A steamed chocolate pot de crème finished with meringue, written for a cook who already has the preceding custard formula in hand. Two lines of the text are worth untangling before you start.
- "Useless vanilla extract"Almost certainly a slip for use less vanilla extract, though that is an editor's reading rather than a certainty. On that reading the chocolate is meant to lead and the vanilla should be kept to a token amount.
- It depends on the recipe above itThe base is the custard given immediately before this entry in the book, so the page is unusable on its own. Boiled custards of the period commonly run in the region of 4 to 6 egg yolks and 3 to 4 oz sugar per pint of milk or thin cream, but the preceding recipe governs.
- "Best French chocolate"In American writing of this period the phrase generally indicated a sweetened eating or drinking chocolate, often already vanilla-scented, rather than the unsweetened baking block or cocoa powder, though usage was not consistent. A 60 to 65 percent bittersweet chocolate, about 2 oz per pint of custard, is a reasonable modern stand-in; reduce the sugar in the custard accordingly.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe whole instruction is "do not become cooked enough to curdle." Custard sets around 170-180F and scrambles not far above. Steam over water at a bare tremble, not a rolling boil, and pull the cups when the centres still wobble.
- Steamer versus water bathThe author prefers the steamer, saying only that the oven water bath does "more injury to the cups"; he does not say what the injury is. Either works; a covered steamer basket gives more even heat and no risk of water slopping into the custards.
- Fifteen minutes is optimisticThe recipe does not say what size or kind of cup it assumes. Modern ramekins of 4 to 6 oz in thick stoneware will likely want 20 to 30 minutes, and the wobble, not the clock, is the test.
- Baking the meringue"very slightly" means colour only; the book gives no temperature. A hot oven for a few minutes sets the surface without cooking the custard further. Note that a meringue browned this fast stays essentially raw inside; if that matters to you, use an Italian meringue made with hot syrup.
- The parting hintThe last sentence reads as the author hinting that the flavour nobody can name in his caramel creams and custards is the burnt sugar itself, though he does not spell it out, and the remark sits oddly with this chocolate recipe.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, and the quantity depends on the preceding custard. A pint of custard would fill roughly six small cups, or four generous ones. Serve cold or barely warm, the day they are made.
Individual baked custards in their own porcelain cups were a familiar item on American hotel and restaurant dessert lists at the end of the nineteenth century, related to the French pot de crème and convenient because they portion themselves and travel from range to table without cutting or serving. "French chocolate" in this period generally denoted a sweetened bar, often vanilla-flavoured, sold for drinking and confectionery rather than the unsweetened American baking chocolate. The closing remark about the guessing class points to a trade book addressed to working bakers and apprentices, complete with the small professional secrets -- here a spoonful of burnt sugar -- that separated a house custard from an ordinary one.