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Lady Fingers
Add two heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar to the stiffly beater whites of three eggs. Add to these the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, and vanilla extract. Fold in one half cup of flour which has been sifted twice with a pinch of salt. Line a pan with paper but do not grease it, and press the batter through a pastry bag on to it. Form in strips four inches long and one inch wide. Sprinkle these with powdered sugar and bake in a moderate oven ten minutes.
A lean, sugar-shy version of the ladyfinger, the piped sponge biscuit that underpins charlottes and trifles. Most of what can go wrong happens between the last fold and the oven door.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whole structure is the beaten whites; there is no chemical leavening and almost no fat. Fold the yolks and then the flour through in as few strokes as will incorporate them, and pipe immediately, since the batter slackens within minutes of standing.
- "Powdered sugar" in 1911"Powdered sugar" in a book of this period -- in American books of this era the term often meant a finely ground sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today, though usage was not consistent. For the sugar beaten into the whites either works; for the dusting on top, superfine granulated tends to give the traditional crackled, pearled crust, while confectioners' sugar is more likely to melt in.
- Two heaping tablespoons is genuinely littleSomething in the region of 25-30 g of sugar to three whites and two yolks. The result is a dry, pale, faintly sweet biscuit meant to soak up custard or liqueur rather than be eaten alone. Modern ladyfinger formulas generally carry two to three times the sugar; if you want a biscuit that stands on its own, use a current recipe rather than adjusting this one blind.
- Moderate ovenUsually rendered today as about 350F (period usage for "moderate" runs roughly 350-375F). Ten minutes is right for a strip an inch wide; the fingers should be set and barely coloured at the edges, not browned. Rotate the pan once if your oven runs unevenly.
- Lining the pan"Paper" here means unwaxed baking paper of the day; parchment is the direct equivalent and, as the recipe insists, it must not be greased. Grease makes the batter spread and the fingers lose their piped shape.
- PipingA plain round tip of about half an inch gives four-inch strips that bake out to roughly the inch of width called for. Leave an inch between them; they spread a little and touch easily.
- The sugar dustingSprinkle, wait a minute for it to dampen, then sprinkle again and tip the pan to shed the loose excess. This is what produces the beaded surface on a proper savoiardi.
- Yield and keepingAbout eighteen to twenty fingers. They soften quickly in humid air; cool completely and store airtight, or leave them out overnight on purpose if they are destined for a charlotte, where staler is better.
- The odd yolkThree whites to two yolks leaves you one yolk over. Save it for a custard or enrich the batter of something else the same day.
Ladyfingers are the English name for what Italian bakers call savoiardi and the French biscuits \spoon biscuits, from the era before pastry bags, when the batter was shaped with two spoons. The form is traditionally traced to the court of Savoy, though the attribution is folklore rather than documented history; what is certain is that a piped or spooned egg-foam sponge was standard European confectionery well before 1900. Their purpose in a household book like Butterick's is structural: they line charlotte moulds, cushion trifles, and absorb wine or custard without collapsing, which is why the sugar here is so restrained. Their appearance in a chapter headed "Doughnuts and Gingerbread" says more about the loose organisation of turn-of-the-century domestic manuals than about the biscuit.