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Spanish Puffs
922. Take a large breakfast-cup of milk with a small piece of butter; let it come to a boil, but, before it boils up, mix in flour with the left hand, while stirring as quickly as possible with the right, till nearly as thick as dough. Take it off the fire, and drop in three yolks of eggs, mixing one thoroughly before adding another. Then turn it out into a plate, and take a small piece off with the end of a spoon. Fry it in lard, of a nice brown. Sprinkle with sugar and serve in a napkin.
This is choux paste, fried rather than baked — the same panade of milk, butter and flour that becomes profiteroles, dropped into hot fat where it puffs hollow. The recipe assumes you know what the finished paste should feel like, so the notes below fill in the numbers.
- A large breakfast-cupVictorian breakfast cups held roughly 8 to 10 fl oz; take it as a generous cup of milk. The "small piece of butter" is unspecified but choux convention puts it near 2 oz (55 g) for that volume of liquid.
- Flour by feel, not by measureNo quantity is given because the paste is judged by texture. Expect somewhere around 4 to 5 oz (about 1 cup) of plain flour for a cup of milk. The recipe has you work it in over the fire as the milk heats, stirring as fast as you can, until the paste is smooth and thick and comes together in the pan.
- Do not let the milk boil awayThe instruction to add flour before it boils up is the hinge. Once milk boils it reduces and the fat-to-liquid ratio shifts, and the puffs come out heavy. Bring it just to the point of trembling, then go in with the flour.
- Cool before the yolks"Take it off the fire" matters — hot paste will scramble the yolks. Let it sit two or three minutes, then beat in one yolk at a time until fully absorbed before the next. Yolks only make a richer, denser puff than whole eggs; the paste will be stiffer than a piped choux.
- Frying temperatureLard at 340 to 350F (170 to 175C) is right. Higher and the outside browns before the centre has time to expand and dry; the puffs will collapse and stay raw inside. They should sink, rise, and turn themselves as they swell. Fry six or so at a time so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Give them roomThese roughly triple in size. Small spoonfuls, as the recipe says, are not modesty — a large one will still be wet paste at the core when the crust is brown.
- Serving in a napkinA folded linen napkin on the dish absorbs frying fat and holds the heat. Draining on paper does the same job. Dust with caster or icing sugar only at the moment of serving.
- YieldPerhaps 18 to 24 small puffs from a cup of milk, depending how small you keep them; enough for three or four. They are best eaten straight from the fat and do not keep.