Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Vanilla Souffle Pudding
Vanilla Souffle Pudding
Mix five tablespoonfuls of flour to a smooth paste with one-half pint of cold milk, then stir in one-half pint of boiling milk; pour it into a saucepan, and stir over the fire for five minutes. Beat the yolks of five eggs with two tablespoonfuls of sugar, then mix them in with the milk and flour, and flavor the mixture with a small quantity of essence of vanilla. Beat the whites of five eggs well, and stir them into the above mixture when it is cold. Coat the inside of a mould with butter, ornament it with halves of dried cherries, and pour in the souffle; place a sheet of buttered paper on top, and tie a cloth over. Boil the souffle for an hour and a half, then remove the mould from the water, and in three or four minutes' time turn the souffle onto a hot dish, and serve at once.
This is a steamed pudding built on a flour-and-milk panada, not the baked soufflé the name suggests. It rises gently in the mould and holds its shape well enough to turn out.
- The hinge: fold coldThe recipe says to add the whites "when it is cold," and that is the whole trick. Whites stirred into a warm base deflate and the pudding turns dense and eggy. Cool the flour-and-yolk base to room temperature, then fold the whites in with a spatula in three additions.
- MeasurementsA half pint is 1 cup, so the pudding uses 2 cups of milk in total, half cold and half boiling. Five tablespoons of flour to that much milk gives a thick, smooth sauce; the five minutes over the fire is to cook out the raw flour taste and set the thickening.
- Essence of vanillaNineteenth-century essences varied a good deal in strength from maker to maker. Use 1 to 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, or the seeds of half a pod steeped in the boiling milk.
- SugarTwo tablespoons for five eggs and two cups of milk is barely sweet by modern taste. This recipe names no accompaniment, but puddings of this type were often served with a sweet sauce, and a vanilla custard sauce or thin apricot glaze suits it.
- Dried cherriesThese may have been candied or glace fruit rather than what we now call dried cherries; the text does not say. Halve them and press them cut-side down into the buttered mould so they set into the surface. Modern dried sour cherries work but are better plumped in warm water first.
- Mould and coveringUse a 1.5-quart pudding basin or charlotte mould, filled no more than three-quarters to leave room for the rise. Buttered parchment replaces the buttered paper; foil crimped tightly, or a cloth tied under the rim with kitchen twine, keeps condensation out.
- "Boil" means steamSet the mould in a deep pot on a rack or folded cloth, with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, and keep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never runs dry over the hour and a half.
- Turning outThe three or four minutes' rest lets the pudding pull slightly from the sides. Run a thin knife around the rim, invert onto a warmed dish, and serve immediately; it settles noticeably within ten minutes.
- YieldSix modest servings, or four generous ones.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's famous maître d'hôtel, published this collection in 1896, and the recipe belongs broadly to the family of the pudding soufflé — though the French form is usually baked in a bain-marie rather than boiled — in which a stiff bouillie or panada of flour and milk is enriched with yolks and lightened with beaten whites, then steamed rather than baked. The panada base is what distinguishes it from a true soufflé: the starch stabilises the eggs so the pudding survives a long, wet cooking and, crucially, being unmoulded at table. Steamed and turned-out puddings in decorated moulds were a staple of hotel and grand-household service in the period, and the halved cherries pressed into the buttered mould gave a patterned surface with no further garnishing.