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Sugar (Rub fruit through sieve if)
Rub fruit through sieve; if canned fruit is used, first drain from syrup. Heat, and sweeten if needed; beat whites of eggs until stiff, add gradually hot fruit pulp, and salt, and continue beating; turn into buttered and sugared individual moulds, having them three-fourths full; set moulds in pan of hot water and bake in slow oven until firm, which may be determined by pressing with finger; serve with Sabyon Sauce. 1/4 cup butter Spanish Soufflé ½ cup stale bread crumbs 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons sugar 3 eggs ½ teaspoon vanilla Melt butter, add crumbs, cook until slightly browned, stirring often; add milk and sugar, cook twenty minutes in double boiler; remove from fire, add unbeaten yolks of eggs, then cut and fold in whites of eggs beaten until stiff, and flavor.
Bake same as Fruit Soufflé.
Chestnut Soufflé 1/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup chestnut purée ½ cup milk Whites 3 eggs Mix sugar and flour, add chestnuts and milk gradually; cook five minutes, stirring constantly; beat whites of eggs until stiff, and cut and fold into mixture. Bake same as Fruit Soufflé; serve with Cream Sauce. 2 cups milk 1/4 cup rice
This page has run three recipes together: the tail of a Fruit Soufflé, then Spanish Soufflé, then Chestnut Soufflé, with the first line of a rice pudding stranded at the end. The Fruit Soufflé's ingredient list is missing, but the method is complete enough to work from.
- The missing quantitiesComparable fruit soufflés of the period run to roughly a cup of thick fruit pulp to the whites of three or four eggs, with a few grains of salt and sugar to taste. The book does not print the list on this page, so treat any figure as a reconstruction rather than the original.
- "Slow oven"300F. These are baked custards set with egg white, and they curdle and weep above about 325F. The water bath is not optional.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirHot pulp goes into the beaten whites gradually while beating, but everywhere else the instruction is "cut and fold." Once the whites deflate the soufflé bakes into a dense sweet omelet.
- Buttered and sugared mouldsButter first, then dust with granulated sugar and knock out the excess. The sugar gives the batter something to climb and helps it release. Ramekins of 6 to 8 oz stand in for the individual moulds; fill three-quarters, as written.
- Testing for donenessPressing with a finger means the top should spring back and feel set, not liquid beneath. Reckon on 25 to 35 minutes for individual moulds in a 300F water bath.
- Sabyon SauceA typographic variant of sabayon: egg yolks, sugar and wine whisked over hot water until foamy. It is served warm and will not hold, so make it while the soufflés bake.
- Chestnut pur eUnsweetened chestnut pur e in a can or vacuum pack works; the sweetened cr me de marrons does not, as the recipe adds its own sugar. Whisk the pur e smooth with a little of the milk before adding the rest or it stays lumpy.
- YieldThe two complete recipes should fill four to six individual moulds. Serve them as soon as they come from the oven; they begin to sink as they cool.
Soufflés came into American cookbooks from French practice, and by the time they reached Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook-Book they had been domesticated into the pudding chapter rather than treated as a chef's set piece. The Spanish Soufflé here is really a bread-crumb pudding lightened with egg white, a thrifty use for stale bread that recurs throughout the period; the name appears to be conventional rather than geographic. The chestnut version belongs to a time when chestnuts were a familiar autumn ingredient in the Northeast, before the blight that spread from the early twentieth century destroyed the American chestnut and left cooks dependent on imported European nuts and canned purée.