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Sweets and Cakes: Marsala
No. 222. Zabajone Ingredients: Eggs, sugar, Marsala, Maraschino or other light-coloured liqueur, sponge fingers. as Zabajone is a kind of syllabub. It is made with Marsala and Maraschino, or Marsala and yellow Chartreuse. Reckon the quantities follows: For each person the yolks of three eggs, one teaspoonful of castor sugar to each egg, and a wine-glass of wine and liqueur mixed. Whip up the yolks of the eggs with the sugar, then gradually add the wine. Put this in a bainmarie, and stir until it has thickened to the consistency of a custard. Take care, however, that it does not boil.
Serve hot in custard glasses, and hand sponge fingers with it.
No. 223. Iced Zabajone Ingredients: Eggs, castor sugar, Marsala, cinnamon, lemon, stick vanilla, rum, Maraschino, butter, ice.
Mix the yolks of ten eggs, two dessert-spoonsful of castor sugar, and three wine-glasses of Marsala, add half a stick of vanilla, a small bit of whole cinnamon, and the peel of half a lemon cut into slices.
Whip this up lightly over a slow fire until it is nearly boiling and slightly frothy; then remove it, take out the cinnamon, vanilla, and lemon peel, and whip up the rest for a minute or two away from the fire. Add a tablespoonful of Maraschino and one of rum, and, if you like, a small quantity of dissolved isinglass.
Stir up the whole, pour it into a silver soufflé dish, and put it on ice. Serve with spongecakes or ice wafers.
No. 224. Pan-forte di Siena (Sienese Hardbake) Ingredients: Honey, almonds, filberts, candied lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate, cornflour, large wafers. Boil half a pound of honey in a copper vessel, and then add to it a few blanched almonds and filberts cut in halves or quarters and slightly browned, a little candied lemon peel, a dust of pepper and powdered cinnamon and a quarter pound of grated chocolate. Mix all well together, and gradually add a tablespoonful of cornflour and two of ground almonds to thicken it. Then take the vessel off the fire, spread the mixture on large wafers, and make each cake about inch thick. Garnish them on the top with almonds cut in half, and dust over a little powdered sugar and cinnamon, then put them in a very slow oven for an hour. an NEW CENTURY SAUCE¹ No. 225. Fish Sauce Add one dessert-spoonful of the sauce to a quarter pint of melted butter sauce.
Three recipes here: a hot zabaglione, a chilled version, and Siena's panforte. The zabaglione hinges on temperature control, the panforte on how quickly boiled honey sets.
- The wine-glassIn this period a wine-glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz (1/4 cup). Three wine-glasses of Marsala in No. 223 is therefore roughly 3/4 cup for ten yolks.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar. Ordinary granulated works but dissolves more slowly into the yolks; give it an extra minute of whisking.
- Which MarsalaUse a sweet Marsala (dolce) rather than the dry cooking Marsala sold for savoury dishes, or the custard will taste thin and sharp.
- Do not let it boilThis is the whole recipe. Yolks set at around 160-170F; above about 180F they scramble and the foam collapses into curds. Keep the bowl over barely trembling water, whisk constantly, and pull it off the moment it coats the whisk and holds a ribbon.
- Bain-marieA heatproof bowl over a pan of hot water, the bowl not touching the water. No. 223's "whip up lightly over a slow fire" means the same thing in practice; direct heat on a modern burner will overshoot fast.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from fish swim bladders, now rarely found in kitchen quantities though still sold for brewing. Powdered or leaf gelatine is the modern equivalent, and in a dish that is only chilled rather than moulded it can simply be left out.
- FilbertsHazelnuts. Toast and rub off the papery skins before chopping, as they turn bitter in the honey.
- The copper vesselCopper was preferred for boiling honey and sugar because it conducts evenly. Any heavy-based saucepan does the job; work quickly once the nuts and chocolate go in, because the mass stiffens as it cools and becomes almost unspreadable.
- Large wafersEdible rice-paper or communion-style wafer sheets, the traditional base that stops panforte welding itself to the tin. Baking parchment is the usual substitute.
- A very slow oven250-275F. The hour of baking is there to dry and set the paste, not to brown it; panforte should still be soft when it comes out and firms as it cools.
- Yield and servingNo. 222 gives three yolks per person, which is generous by modern standards -- two per person makes a better-sized glass. Half a pound of honey with the nuts and chocolate makes only a small quantity, cut into thin wedges.
- The pepper'A dust of pepper' is deliberate and characteristic, not a misprint. Black or white pepper, a small pinch, gives panforte its faint heat behind the spice.
Zabaglione is one of the family of whipped wine custards, and this book is right to call it "a kind of syllabub" -- the English syllabub used cream and sack, the Italian version yolks and Marsala. Its invention is traditionally attributed to a Turinese cook and the name sometimes traced to San Pasquale Baylon, patron of pastry cooks, though both stories are folklore rather than record. Marsala, the fortified wine of western Sicily developed for the British export trade in the late eighteenth century, was widely available in Victorian Britain, which is why a book like this treats it as an everyday store cupboard wine. Panforte belongs to Siena and to the older medieval tradition of honey-and-spice confections dense with pepper and candied peel, sold at fairs and closely associated with Christmas; the chocolate is not part of the older formula and appears to be a later addition. The stray "New Century Sauce" note at the end appears to refer to a proprietary bottled sauce.