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Cream Souffles
Put four tablespoonfuls of flour into a saucepan with four ounces of butter and stir over the fire until it is well-mixed, then pour in by degrees one pint of cream, and continue stirring until it boils. Turn the mixture onto a dish and leave it until cool. Warm four ounces of butter and beat until creamy, then beat in gradually the yolks of ten eggs and three ounces of vanilla-sugar. Whip the whites of six eggs to a stiff froth and stir them with the other eggs into the cooled mixture. Butter the interior of a souffle mould thick and strew it over with breadcrumbs, shaking out the superfluous ones; pour in the mixture and tie a sheet of buttered-paper over the top. Place the mould in a saucepan, pour round it boiling water to three parts its height taking care not to allow any to go into the mould, and boil it gently at the side of the fire for three-quarters of an hour. When the mould is cooked, turn it onto a hot dish, and serve without delay.
This is not a baked soufflé but a steamed soufflé pudding — a thick pâte à choux-style panade enriched with butter and ten yolks, lightened with six whites, and cooked in a covered mould set in simmering water. The hinge is the water: it must stay at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or the egg sets coarse and the pudding weeps.
- Quantities in modern termsFour tablespoons flour is about 1 oz (30 g); the two separate 4-oz portions of butter total 8 oz (225 g), half cooked into the panade and half creamed with the yolks. One pint of cream is 2 cups by American measure (20 fl oz if the book is reckoning in imperial) — heavy cream as written, though half-and-half gives a lighter result.
- Vanilla-sugarThree ounces (about 6 tablespoons) of caster sugar that has sat with a split vanilla pod for a week or more. Substitute the same weight of sugar plus a teaspoon of vanilla extract or the seeds of one pod.
- The souffle mouldA plain charlotte or pudding mould of about 2 quarts, or a deep metal bowl. Butter it heavily and coat with fine dry breadcrumbs; the crumb layer is what lets the pudding release cleanly. Fill no more than two-thirds full — it rises considerably.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered on the underside, tied down with string; a layer of foil over that keeps steam out. It keeps water and condensation off the surface without a rigid lid.
- "Boil it gently at the side of the fire"On a range this means the lowest setting that keeps the water trembling rather than rolling, with the pot half-covered. Top up with boiling water if the level falls below halfway; three-quarters up the mould is the target.
- Timing and donenessForty-five minutes suits a 2-quart mould. A skewer into the centre should come out clean and the pudding should feel set but springy; if it is still liquid at the core give it ten minutes more rather than raising the heat.
- Turning outRest the mould a few minutes off the heat before unmoulding, or the pudding may tear. It sinks as it cools, which may be why the original insists on serving without delay; a fruit sauce or thin custard made ahead is a common accompaniment.
- YieldServes eight to ten as a dessert course.
This is the classic *soufflé pudding* of the nineteenth-century professional repertoire — a dish that sits between a soufflé and a cabinet pudding. Steaming in a sealed mould has often been explained as the practical answer for a hotel dining room: a true baked soufflé collapses within minutes of leaving the oven, while a moulded pudding holds its shape long enough to cross a large room and be portioned at table. The panade base — flour cooked in butter, then thinned with cream and boiled — is the usual construction for soufflé mixtures, and the imbalance of yolks to whites (ten to six) is what gives it the dense, almost custardy body that distinguishes a pudding from the airier oven version. Vanilla-sugar, made by burying pods in a jar of sugar, is said to have been common in a period when extract was expensive.