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Lady Fingers
5 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
3 egg-whites
½ cup flour
2 egg-yolks
¼ teaspoon salt
Add the powdered sugar to the stiffly beaten egg-whites. Add to these the two well-beaten yolks and the vanilla extract. Fold in the flour, which has been sifted twice with the salt. Line a pan with paper but do not grease it. Press the batter through a pastry bag on to it, forming strips four inches long and one inch wide. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and bake in a moderate oven (350° F.) for ten minutes.
A plain sponge batter with no leavening but beaten egg — everything depends on how much air survives the mixing. The recipe is workable as written; the notes below cover the vessels, the folding and the yield.
- Powdered sugarIn modern terms this is closest to confectioners' sugar, and 5 tablespoons is roughly 1/3 cup; note that in books of this period "powdered sugar" sometimes meant a finely granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-blended kind. Either does no harm here.
- Beat the whites only to soft-stiffWhites whipped bone dry break into curds when the yolks and flour go in. Stop while the peak still bends at the tip, then add the sugar a spoonful at a time to stabilise it.
- Folding is the hingeSift the flour over the surface in two or three additions and cut through with a spatula rather than stirring. Overworked batter spreads flat on the pan instead of holding a raised finger.
- Line a pan with paper, ungreasedParchment is the modern equivalent; the instruction not to grease is deliberate, since fat lets the batter slump sideways. A silicone mat works but gives a softer bottom.
- PipingA plain round tip of about 1/2 inch gives the 4-inch by 1-inch strips. Leave at least an inch between them — they widen as they set.
- SugaringDust, wait a minute for the sugar to dampen, then dust again. The second coat is what produces the faint crackled crust these are known for.
- Oven and time350°F is right, and ten minutes is close to the limit. Pull them when the edges are pale gold and the tops spring back; a further two minutes turns them into dry biscuits.
- YieldThree whites make roughly 18 to 24 fingers of the stated size. They stale quickly — best the day they are baked, or dried further on purpose for lining charlottes.
Lady fingers are the English name for the small finger-shaped sponge biscuits known in France as biscuits à la cuillère, literally spoon biscuits, a name often said to come from the days before pastry bags when the batter was dropped from two spoons. They belong to the family of egg-foam batters that rise on beaten white alone, a technique that predates chemical leavening entirely and was long a test of a cook's arm. Their real usefulness in a book like this one is structural: split and stood upright, they line the mould for a charlotte russe, and soaked in coffee or liqueur they carry any number of moulded creams and trifles. A household that could turn out a tray of these had the foundation of the fashionable cold desserts of the early twentieth century.