No. 3033

Eggs with Coffee Cream Meringued

Œufs a la Creme au Cafe Meringues

Break seven or eight eggs in a vessel, beat and strain through a sieve; add a grain of salt, two spoonfuls of sugar, twelve pulverized lady fingers, four gills of raw cream and one gill of very strong coffee. Stir the preparation for two minutes on the fire, then pour it into a buttered tart dish; let it set in a bain-marie or slack oven and remove as soon as firm. When nearly cold cover over with a layer of Italian meringue (No. 140) flavored with cognac, smooth nicely and besprinkle with pulverized lady fingers; poach for a few moments in a slack oven, glazing over with sugar.

← No. 3032 Eggs with Cream, Meringued Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3034 Flawn a la Manhattan →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked coffee custard set in a water bath, then capped with Italian meringue and browned. The whole thing turns on not letting the custard get above a gentle set.

Gills and spoonfulsA gill is half a cup, so four gills of cream is 2 cups and the gill of coffee is 1/2 cup. Ranhofer's "spoonful" is a tablespoon; two of them for eight eggs and two cups of cream makes a barely sweet custard, and most cooks will want closer to 1/3 cup.
Slack ovenA slack oven is generally reckoned somewhere around 250-300F. This is a custard, not a cake: keep the oven low, since too much heat will make the eggs curdle and weep even in a water bath.
The hinge — two minutes on the fireThat brief stirring on the heat is meant only to dissolve the sugar and warm the mixture so it sets evenly, not to thicken it. Keep the heat low and the spoon moving, and pull it the moment it is warm to the finger; if it begins to thicken you have scrambled eggs suspended in cream.
Judging "as soon as firm"The custard is done when the edges are set and the center still trembles as a single mass — around 170-175F on an instant thermometer. Carry-over heat finishes it, so pull the dish out of the water bath rather than leaving it to coast.
Raw cream"Raw cream" here means unpasteurized and simply uncooked; use plain heavy cream. Avoid ultra-pasteurized if you can find an alternative, as it sets a shade less cleanly.
Lady fingersTwelve pulverized lady fingers — dry Italian savoiardi, not the soft supermarket kind — comes to roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of fine crumbs. They add body alongside the eggs, so grind them properly rather than crushing them coarsely.
Italian meringue, No. 140Ranhofer's No. 140 is his Italian meringue: whites whipped with a hot sugar syrup boiled to about the small-ball stage (in the region of 240F), which is why it can be applied to a cold custard and browned without collapsing. A French meringue of whites and raw sugar will not hold up the same way.
"Poach" and "glaze"Poaching the meringue means setting it back in that same slack oven for a few minutes; glazing means dusting with sugar and coloring the surface fast under high heat. A broiler or a blowtorch does what a nineteenth-century salamander did.
YieldEight eggs and two cups of cream will roughly fill a 9-inch tart dish and serve six to eight. The recipe has the custard nearly cold before the meringue goes on, and it returns to the oven only briefly to poach and glaze.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in the hot entremets — the sweet course served before the dessert proper. The construction is thoroughly French: a custard baked in a bain-marie, thickened partly with crushed biscuit rather than more egg, then finished with Italian meringue and glazed, a finish Ranhofer returns to in a number of his numbered variations. Coffee as a pastry flavoring was fashionable in this period and depended on brewing something far stronger than a drinking cup; the "very strong coffee" of the original is closer to espresso in intent than to filter coffee. The cross-references to No. 140 and to No. 3032 are typical of the book's method — Ranhofer wrote for professional kitchens where the base preparations were already made, and expected the reader to work by number.