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Souffles
Souffles are usually cooked in flat, metal dishes, round tins or fluted moulds, according to the style, a very useful flat dish being one with a loose, tin lining, the souffle being kept nicely warmed by hot water in the larger vessel. (I). Mix in a saucepan two ounces of potato flour, two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, a little finely-chopped lemon peel, and one teacupful of milk, and stir them over the fire until boiling; then put in one ounce of butter and continue stirring until the flour is cooked. When the mixture is cool add the beaten yolks of four eggs, stir quickly and then add the well-whisked whites of the eggs. Butter a dish-dish, turn the mixture into it and bake it for twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven. Serve the dish as soon as it is cooked.
A small, plain sweet souffle built on a potato-starch base rather than flour, which gives a lighter, slightly cleaner-tasting rise. The instructions are terse in the way period professional notes usually are, and a few of the terms need translating.
- Fold, do not stir, the whitesThe text says "add the well-whisked whites" without qualification, but everything depends on it. Loosen the cooled base with a spoonful of the whites, then fold the rest in gently until barely combined; a streak of white left behind is better than a deflated batter.
- Potato flourThis is potato starch (fecule), sold today as potato starch rather than the coarser potato flour ground from whole dried potato. Two ounces is about 1/3 cup. Whole potato flour will give a heavy, faintly earthy result.
- Teacupful of milkA period teacup runs about 6 fluid ounces, so roughly 3/4 cup. The base should come to a thick, glossy paste that pulls from the pan when the starch is cooked out.
- Powdered sugarIn 1896 this generally meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar on shelves now. Superfine sugar is the closest match; two tablespoons makes this only lightly sweet, as intended for a course served with a sauce.
- Moderate oven350F. Twenty-five minutes suits a single dish of about a quart; individual ramekins will be done in 12 to 15 minutes.
- "Butter a dish-dish"Almost certainly a printer's slip for the souffle dish. Butter it thoroughly and dust with sugar rather than flour, which gives the batter something to climb and a thin caramelized crust.
- The flat dish with a loose tin liningThis is a hot-water arrangement for keeping a finished souffle warm, exactly as the text describes. It is a holding device, not a cooking method: this batter is baked directly in a buttered dish, not in a water bath.
- Lemon peelZest only, taken off with no white pith, chopped as fine as you can manage. It goes into the milk at the start so the oils infuse the base.
- Yield and timingFour eggs make a souffle for four as a light dessert course. "Serve the dish as soon as it is cooked" is literal instruction, not flourish; it will begin to fall within two or three minutes of leaving the oven.
Oscar Tschirky presided over the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its stoves, but his 1896 compilation records the working repertoire of a large French-trained brigade in New York, and the souffle was one of its signatures: cheap in materials, expensive in labor and timing, so it advertised that a kitchen could cook to the minute. The word comes from the French souffler, to blow or puff. Building the base on potato starch instead of wheat flour was a standard pastry variation of the period, fecule being valued for setting more lightly and tasting less of raw flour. The lemon peel and modest sugar mark this as the plainest member of a family that ran through vanilla, chocolate, liqueur and fruit-puree versions, each expected to reach the table still standing.