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Crisp Pastry (Take five fresh eggs)
821. Take five fresh eggs, with their weight in powdered sugar, one table-spoonful of flour, and the juice of half a lemon. Beat all, no: whisk, these ingredients well together in a stewpan with an iron spoon, warm it a little over the fire, taking care not to make it too hot, or the pastry will be too thin. Drop it on buttered tins in small quantities, and bake a fine brown. Turn them in the shape of a sugar-loaf, and dry them in the sun on a wire sieve. They should be kept in a dry place; and, just before being sent to table, fill them with coloured jellies or creams. This pastry should be made as thin as possible. These proportions are enough for several times.
This is a thin egg-and-sugar wafer, rolled hot into a cone and filled at the last moment — closer to a tuile or krumkake than to anything a modern cook would call pastry. Everything depends on getting the batter thin and the shaping done in the few seconds before the wafer sets.
- Weigh the eggsFive eggs in the shell come to roughly 9-10 oz (250-280 g), so that is your sugar. Weigh them on the scale rather than guessing; the ratio is the whole recipe. The single tablespoon of flour is correct and is there only to hold the wafer together.
- Warming the batterThe stewpan goes over gentle heat purely to dissolve the sugar and loosen the mixture: warm to the finger, not hot. Overheating starts to cook the eggs; the original's own warning is that too much heat will make the pastry 'too thin.'
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. These bake fast and shallow: 400-425F for four to six minutes, until the edges are brown and the centre still pale. Bake only three or four at a time, because you cannot shape a wafer that has cooled.
- Spreading them thinDrop teaspoonfuls well apart and spread each into a thin disc with the back of the spoon. "As thin as possible" is meant literally; a thick wafer will be chewy rather than crisp and will crack when rolled.
- The sugar-loaf shapeA sugar-loaf was the tall cone that refined sugar was sold in, so the wafers are rolled into cones. Lift each one the moment it leaves the oven and wrap it round a cream-horn mould, a metal cone or even a thick wooden spoon handle; it stiffens in seconds. Any that harden flat can be returned to the oven for a moment to soften.
- Drying in the sunSun-drying on a sieve is the method this recipe gives for driving off the last of the moisture. A low oven of around 200F with the door ajar, or a dehydrator, does the same job and does not depend on the weather.
- StorageSugar-heavy wafers pull damp out of the air and go leathery within hours in a humid kitchen. Airtight tin with a desiccant sachet, and re-crisp in a low oven if they soften.
- Filling and yieldFill with whipped cream, pastry cream or set jelly only as they go to the table; the recipe itself says to fill them 'just before being sent to table.' The full quantity makes a large number of small cones, which is why the recipe notes the proportions are 'enough for several times.'
The British Cookery Book (1859), edited by J. H. Walsh, drew on contributions and on earlier printed sources. The instruction to shape them like a sugar-loaf dates the page as clearly as anything in it: refined sugar reached British kitchens as a hard white cone, broken up with nippers, and the shape was familiar enough to serve as a description without further explanation. The finished cones are dried in the sun on a wire sieve rather than in the oven.