Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Chocolate Biscuit
Chocolate Biscuit
Put the yolks of eight eggs in a basin with half a pound of caster-sugar, mix in six ounces of flour and beat until the batter is quite smooth. Beat the whites of the eggs to a light froth and stir with the foregoing and season the mixture with a few drops of vanilla. Put an ounce and a half of chocolate in a saucepan on the fire and when dissolved put in three tablespoonfuls of sugar and stir until thick. Dip the cold biscuit in the chocolate and lay on a dish.
This is biscuit in the French sense — a whipped-egg sponge, not a cookie — finished with a poured chocolate glaze. The batter is a genoise-type foam with no leavening but the eggs, so the folding is everything.
- Caster sugarHalf a pound is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons. Superfine sugar is the modern equivalent; granulated pulsed briefly in a food processor works.
- Flour weightSix ounces is roughly 1 1/3 cups of all-purpose flour, measured by weight rather than scooped. Cake flour gives a finer crumb and is closer to the soft flours of the period.
- Fold, do not beatThe instruction to "stir" the whites in is the hinge. Beat the whites to soft peaks only, then fold them into the heavy yolk-and-flour batter in three additions with a spatula; overworking here is what produces a flat, rubbery sponge.
- BakingThe original gives no oven or tin. A sponge of this size bakes in a buttered and floured 9-inch tin at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until it springs back and the edges pull from the sides. It must be fully cold before glazing, as the recipe assumes.
- The chocolateAn ounce and a half of "chocolate" here most likely means unsweetened block chocolate, which would explain the three tablespoonfuls of sugar that follow. Melt it over the gentlest heat or a water bath; direct heat on a modern burner scorches it easily.
- Stir until thickWith so little liquid this is a stiff paste rather than a pouring glaze. A tablespoon or two of hot water or cream loosens it enough to coat, and it should be used while warm — it sets quickly.
- YieldEight yolks and six ounces of flour make one substantial cake, or a number of small individual sponges baked in a shallow tin and cut before glazing.
In late nineteenth-century kitchen usage biscuit meant a sponge in which whites and yolks are whipped separately, like the Italians' pan di Spagna; ladyfingers are much the same batter, piped and dried. Oscar Tschirky's book collects working formulas associated with the Waldorf, and its terseness is characteristic: no oven or tin is given at all. Block chocolate was cheap and widely available by this date, and the unsweetened baking sort would account for sugar being added at the stove.