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Baked Souffle
Three eggs, two table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar and a thimbleful of cornflour or feculina flour. The original recipe gives also one packet of vanilla sugar, but as this may be difficult to get in England it will be easier to add a few drops of vanilla essence when mixing. Mix the yolks of eggs with the sugar for ten minutes, then add the whites, stiffly beaten, stirring in very lightly, so as to let as much air as possible remain in the mixture; sprinkle in the flour. Take a fireproof dish, and butter it, and pour in the mixture, which place in a gentle oven for a quarter of an hour. It is better to practice this recipe at lest once before you prepare it at a dinner, on account of the baking.
A three-egg soufflé with almost nothing in it: no milk, no butter in the batter, no roux. It rises on beaten whites alone, which is why the author warns you to rehearse it.
- A thimblefulAn imprecise measure even in 1915; a thimble holds something under a teaspoon. One to two teaspoons of cornflour is a reasonable reading, and no more, or the mixture goes heavy.
- FeculinaA fine starch flour; the name comes from the French fécule, starch. Potato starch or cornflour will do.
- Vanilla sugarA small paper sachet of sugar carrying vanilla flavour, sold on the Continent; modern ones run to about 8 g. Use a few drops of vanilla essence, as the author suggests, or sugar stored with a split pod.
- A gentle ovenA moderate-to-low heat, in the region of 300-325°F. Too hot an oven will rise and collapse a mixture this lean quickly.
- Ten minutes on the yolksNot padding. Beating yolks and sugar until pale and thick builds the second structure that holds the thing up; by hand it really does take that long, and rather less with a mixer.
- FoldingThe hinge of the recipe. Sift the starch over the surface and fold with a spatula in as few strokes as will just combine — visible streaks of white are preferable to a deflated batter.
- The dishA buttered fireproof dish, straight-sided, with room for the mixture to rise; small individual dishes will bake faster than the quarter hour given. Butter upward strokes on the sides so the mixture can climb.
- Yield and timingTwo servings, three at a stretch. Serve straight from the oven with the pudding spoon already on the table; it falls within a couple of minutes and cannot be held.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief funds — which is why the notes keep pausing to explain that an ingredient familiar in Brussels or Liège "may be difficult to get in England." The little aside about vanilla sugar in sachets is a small record of a displaced cook working around an unfamiliar shop. The dish itself is the plainest form of a sweet soufflé: eggs, sugar and a pinch of starch, the sort of thing a household could produce from the pantry in wartime without milk or cream.