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Lemon Souffle
Stir one ounce of flour into one ounce of warmed butter; when entirely smooth mix in one pint of milk previously sweetened with one tablespoonful of sugar, grate in the rind of a small lemon, and stir the mixture over the fire until it is thick. Remove the saucepan, stir in gradually the beaten yolks of three eggs, beat the whites of four eggs to a stiff froth, then mix them lightly with the rest. Butter a pudding mould, tie a strip of paper round the outside to prevent the souffle coming over it as it rises, pour the preparation into the mould, stand it in a saucepan with boiling water to half its height, and allow it to simmer by the side of the fire until sufficiently firm to turn out. Make a sauce as follows: Boil two tablespoonfuls of crushed loaf sugar in one teacupful of cold water for ten minutes, then put in the strained juice of a lemon. Mix one teaspoonful of flour with one wineglassful of sherry, mix it with the syrup and stir it over the fire until thickened. Turn the pudding out onto a dish, pour the sauce over, and serve.
This is a steamed soufflé pudding rather than a baked soufflé: it sets in a water bath and is turned out, so it wants to be firm enough to stand, not airy enough to collapse. The hinge is the water, which must stay at a bare simmer and never boil hard, or the mixture inflates and then falls.
- Weights and volumesOne ounce of flour is a scant 1/4 cup; one ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. A pint of milk in an American book of this period is 16 fluid ounces, or 2 cups.
- Teacup and wineglassA teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though period sources differ, and a wineglass at about 2 fluid ounces. Both were common kitchen measures when this was written and neither means the vessel in your cupboard.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined sugar sold in solid cones, crushed as needed. Granulated sugar is the same thing in a more convenient form; use it measure for measure.
- Building the baseThe flour and butter make a roux that should cook a minute without colouring before the milk goes in. Add the milk gradually and stir until it thickens well past the point of coating a spoon, or the whites will have nothing to hold them.
- Adding the yolksLet the pan stand off the heat a minute or two before the yolks go in, and add them one at a time. Straight into a boiling base they scramble, and the flecks will not disappear.
- Four whites, three yolksThe extra white appears to be there for lift without extra richness. Fold in a third of the froth to slacken the base, then the rest, and stop as soon as no white streaks remain.
- Mould and collarA 1 1/2-quart pudding mould or charlotte tin, buttered, filled no more than two-thirds. The paper strip tied round the rim is a collar to catch the rise; parchment secured with kitchen string does the job.
- Steaming timeCover the pan and keep the water at a lazy simmer, topping it up with boiling water as it drops. Reckon 45 to 60 minutes; the pudding is ready when the centre resists light pressure and a skewer comes out clean. Let it settle five minutes before turning out.
- The sauceBoiling the sugar and water ten minutes gives a light syrup; slake the teaspoon of flour in the sherry before it meets the hot syrup, then cook it two or three minutes to lose the raw floury taste. It should coat, not thicken to a paste.
- YieldFour to six servings. Serve it as soon as it is unmoulded, with the sauce hot.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the repertoire of the Waldorf kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, when the pastry side of a large hotel worked in a French idiom inherited more or less intact from the mid-nineteenth century. This is a soufflé pudding in that older sense: not the fragile baked soufflé of the modern dining room but a panade of flour, butter and milk lightened with beaten whites, steamed in a mould and turned out so that it could be sauced and carried to the table without deflating on the way. The paper collar tied round the rim is explained in the recipe itself as a guard against overflow as the pudding rises. The sherry-and-lemon sauce belongs to the same tradition, a thin syrup thickened with a little flour, and lemon rind was grated into the milk to flavour it.