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Ladies' Bouchees
Place a small quantity of paste in a pastry-bag. Butter well and flour a bakingsheet, and form a sufficient number of small round biscuits the shape of macaroons, sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar and place in a brisk oven and bake for twelve minutes. Then take out to cool for fifteen minutes. Lift from the pan, lay them upside down on a table, and make a small cavity half an inch in diameter in each, filling with the cream. Fasten them together two by two, to enclose the cream, and they should then be ball-shaped. Then they may be dipped carefully and separately into a thick sugar icing and laid on a pastry grating to dry for fifteen minutes. Dress on a dessert-dish with a folded napkin or ornamental dish-paper, and serve.
A piped-and-sandwiched petit four rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's biscuit paste and a pastry cream to hand. What follows is what a modern cook needs to fill in the gaps.
- "Paste" and "the cream" are cross-referencesNeither is specified here. The paste is presumably a pipeable biscuit or macaroon-type batter given elsewhere in the book, and the cream some sweet filling cream; the page does not say which. Choose them before you begin; the method itself takes only minutes.
- Oven heatA "brisk" oven in this period is usually read as roughly 400-425F. For small piped biscuits that is on the hot side, and twelve minutes may colour them more than you want; 375-400F for 10-12 minutes gives pale, dry shells that hold a cavity. Watch colour rather than the clock.
- Butter and flour, not parchmentThe greased-and-floured sheet is the book's release method, and the flour may also give the piped rounds a little grip. Parchment works, but expect slightly flatter shells.
- The hinge: cool before hollowingThe fifteen minutes off the heat is not padding. Warm shells tear when you scoop the cavity and go soggy the moment cream touches them. They should be fully cool and dry to the touch.
- Pipe in matched pairsSince the halves are joined into balls, uniformity matters more than in most piping. Use a plain round tip, keep the bag vertical, and pipe rounds of the same size in rows so each finds a partner.
- The sugar icing"Thick sugar icing" here means a poured fondant or a stiff glace icing of confectioners' sugar and a little water or egg white, warmed just enough to flow. Dip each ball on a fork, let the excess drain, and set it on a rack; fifteen minutes is about right for a skin to form, longer for a firm shell.
- Yield and servingServing -- They are a one-bite item served with coffee or at the end of a long dinner, and they are at their best the day they are made; once assembled the shells soften quickly.
Bouchee is simply French for "mouthful." Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, compiled his 1896 volume from the hotel's working repertoire, which is why entries like this one read as shop notes rather than instructions for a home cook -- the paste and the cream were evidently standing preparations that needed no restating. The style of the thing, small piped shells hollowed, filled and glazed, belongs to the French pastry tradition that American hotel kitchens drew on in the late nineteenth century.