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Souffle Ices
Pour one pint of syrup, at thirty-two degrees, in a basin, and stir into it the yolks of fifteen or eighteen eggs; strain this into a copper egg-bowl made a little warm by pouring hot water into it and wiping dry afterward; add to this one breakfast cupful of maraschino, the same quantity of filtered strawberry-juice and one pinch of salt. Whisk lightly but briskly, with the bowl standing about six inches deep in very hot water, and when like creamy batter remove it from the hot water and continue to whisk for about ten minutes longer. Place a souffle case in ice, stir in three-fourths of a pint of whipped cream to the mixture, and pour the whole into the case. Place a wide strip of cartridge-paper round the case and about one and one-half inches above it, so as to give the souffle plenty of room to rise like an ordinary souffle. When set and firm turn it onto a cold dish, sprinkle with finely-powdered and brown-baked Savoy biscuits, and serve. Vanilla and Chocolate Souffle, Iced Put the yolks of sixteen eggs in a basin with one teacupful of clarified syrup and one breakfast cupful of water; beat together, then pass it through a fine hair-sieve. Turn the mixture into a saucepan and stir it over a slow fire until it forms a thick custard, but do not allow it to boil. Pour some boiling water in a bowl to warm it, then turn it out; pour the custard into the bowl, stir in one teaspoonful of vanilla flavoring and whip it for several minutes; then stir in one pint of whipped cream and pour all into a mould-mould. Pack it in ice for two hours, put a layer of chocolate on top that has been melted in iced water, and leave for two hours longer. Serve the mould in the mould.
Two frozen soufflés — what French kitchens called soufflé glacé — built on a yolk-and-syrup base rather than a churned ice cream. Nothing is frozen in a machine; the paper collar and the mold do the work of making it look like a baked soufflé.
- Syrup at thirty-two degreesThis is degrees Baumé, a density reading, not oven heat. A 32°B syrup is roughly 60 percent sugar by weight — about 2 cups sugar dissolved in 1 cup water, brought to a boil and cooled. The "clarified syrup" in the second recipe is a sugar syrup that has been clarified; the book does not state its density.
- Cups and vesselsA breakfast cupful is 8–10 fl oz, a teacupful 5–6 fl oz. The "copper egg-bowl" is an unlined copper sabayon basin with a rounded bottom; a stainless bowl over a water bath does the same job, and the pre-warming step presumably serves to keep the yolks from chilling and seizing on cold metal.
- The hinge: cook the yolk base, do not scramble itBoth versions live or die on the same point — the yolks must thicken to a ribboning sabayon or custard without boiling. Work it to 160°F/71°C off the heat of a bare simmer, whisking without pause; a few seconds of direct heat curdles fifteen yolks past saving.
- MaraschinoGenuine maraschino is a clear, dry cherry-pit liqueur (Luxardo is the surviving benchmark), not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The substitution would make the soufflé cloying and pink.
- Why it may not set firmTwo breakfast cupfuls of liquid, one of it strong liqueur, is a great deal of alcohol for a frozen mixture. In a modern freezer at 0°F it will stay soft and spoonable rather than sliceable; cutting the maraschino back to half a cup gives a base that firms up.
- Packing in iceThe original means a mould buried in crushed ice and rock salt, which depending on the salt can run anywhere from around 10F to well below zero. A domestic freezer at 0F works fine, but allow four to six hours rather than two, and press plastic film to the surface to stop ice crystals forming.
- Cartridge-paper and Savoy biscuitsCartridge paper is stiff drawing paper; parchment or a doubled strip of foil tied round the case does the same, standing 1½ inches proud so the frozen mixture rises above the rim. Savoy biscuits are ladyfingers — dry them in a 300°F oven until light brown, then crush to a coarse powder.
- The chocolate top"Melted in iced water" is garbled; the sense is melted chocolate poured over the frozen surface, where it sets to a thin hard shell on contact. Use a couple of ounces of dark chocolate, barely fluid, and work quickly.
- YieldFifteen to eighteen yolks with a pint of syrup, two cupfuls of maraschino and strawberry juice and three-quarters of a pint of whipped cream is a banquet quantity — well over a dozen servings. Halving either recipe is straightforward.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf's kitchen in the 1890s, when the hotel's pastry department was working in a French idiom of the kind Escoffier's generation had made standard, and the soufflé glacé was one of that idiom's small conjuring tricks: a frozen mousse set in a paper-collared case so that it stood above the rim and arrived at table looking like a soufflé fresh from the oven, with none of a hot soufflé's timing risk in a dining room seating hundreds. The base — yolks and dense sugar syrup whisked over hot water, then lightened with cream — is the same appareil à bombe still used for semifreddo. The instruction to pack in ice reflects the working method of the period: the ice-and-salt mould was the pastry cook's usual means of freezing, and a large hotel bought lake or manufactured ice by the ton. Savoy biscuits, the crumb sprinkled over the top, are the English name for the sponge finger or ladyfinger, and appear throughout nineteenth-century hotel cookery as both garnish and lining.