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Dessert Cakes
Mix well a quarter of a pound of butter beaten to a cream with a quarter of a pound of caster-sugar, a similar amount of ground rice, and half a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat up thoroughly three eggs, and then stir them into this mixture. Butter some small cake-tins, and pour in this preparation, and bake in a quick oven for ten to twelve minutes.
Eclairs (Coffee or Chocolate).
Put into a saucepan two gills of milk with two ounces of butter, set on the fire and stir with a wooden spoon; when boiling, add a quarter of a pound of well-sifted flour, and stir briskly for a couple of minutes. Stand the pan on a table, break in one egg, mix sharply for two minutes, break in a second egg, mix sharply again, and repeat with a third and a fourth egg. Place a small tube in a pastry-bag, and press out on a baking-sheet fifteen eclairs three inches in length, and bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes, then remove them and let cool. Open each eclair on one side with a pair of scissors, and, with a spoon, fill the interior with cream. Dip the eclairs, one by one, with the hand into icing. Lay them on a strainer and let cool. Dress on a dish with a folded napkin, and serve.
Two recipes have run together here: a small ground-rice cake and a batch of éclairs. Both are workable as written, but the measurements are Victorian and the oven directions are vague.
- Ground riceMilled white rice, not the whole grain used for rice pudding; modern rice flour is the usual substitute, though ground rice was traditionally a little coarser. A quarter pound is about 3/4 cup. It gives the little cakes a dry, sandy crumb closer to shortbread than sponge.
- Weights for the cakesA quarter pound each of butter, caster sugar and ground rice is 115 g each: roughly 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, 3/4 cup rice flour. Three eggs against 115 g of flour makes a very loose batter, which is why it is poured rather than spooned.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no temperatures; 'quick' and 'hot' are conventionally read today as somewhere around 425-450F. At ten to twelve minutes the small cakes are better at the lower end, or the edges colour before the centres set.
- Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of milk. With two ounces of butter and a quarter pound (about 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons) of flour, this is a choux paste, though a leaner one than the modern standard, which uses roughly twice this much butter.
- The hinge — dry the paste, then cool itStirring briskly for a couple of minutes after the flour goes in is not a formality: it drives off water and cooks the starch, and choux that is too wet will not rise. Equally, let the paste cool a few minutes off the heat before the first egg or it will scramble.
- Baking the éclairsBaking the eclairs -- Twenty minutes at a steady hot oven will colour them but often leaves the insides damp. Many modern recipes start hot, around 425F, and drop to 375F after ten minutes for 25-30 minutes total, and keep the door shut for the first two-thirds of the bake.
- The filling'Cream' here most likely means pastry cream, flavoured with coffee or chocolate to match the icing, though whipped cream was also used for eclairs at this date. Either way, fill only once the shells are completely cold.
- Dipping by handThe icing is most likely poured fondant, warmed to about body temperature so it flows and sets glossy; much above roughly 100F it turns dull and streaky, which is also why it can be handled by hand. Dip the top face only, draw it across the rim of the bowl, and set the eclair down to firm up.
- YieldThe choux makes the fifteen three-inch éclairs stated. The cake batter, in standard cupcake tins, gives about a dozen small cakes.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book is a compilation rather than an invention: as maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf he gathered recipes from the hotel's French-trained kitchen brigade and from the English and American household manuals of the day, which is why an ordinary British ground-rice cake sits directly against a classical Parisian pâtisserie. Éclairs are a product of French pastry work, with the name recorded only from the 1860s — it means "flash of lightning," a term often said to refer to how quickly they are eaten — and they are made from the same choux paste as profiteroles and finished in poured fondant. The ground-rice cake belongs to a different tradition entirely: rice flour was cheap, kept well, and produced the short, crisp tea cakes that filled Victorian cake stands.