No. 3072

Pancakes a la Dejazet

Crepes a la Dejazet

Work nine ounces of flour with a pint of boiling milk in a saucepan until it becomes a smooth paste, then add to it at once four and a half ounces of butter, four ounces of sugar and a pinch of salt. Set the vessel on the fire and stir it with a spoon until it becomes thick and detaches from the sides, then remove it from the fire and let the preparation get cold, afterward adding to it twelve egg-yolks, four ounces of sugar, a finely chopped orange peel and ten egg-whites beaten to a stiff froth. Heat two small frying pans, the bottom of each measuring five inches across; wipe them well and butter over lightly with a brush; then pour into each one a very thin layer of the preparation and cook in a brisk oven, turning them over when half done. Drain them on to a cloth and continue until three-quarters of the preparation is used. Soak them with maraschino and cover with a layer of English coffee cream (No. 41) with vanilla added, then dress them one on top of the other, finishing with a pancake; cover the whole with the remainder of the preparation, pour over some butter and brown in a hot oven, placing another dish underneath the one they are dressed on; bestrew with sugar and glaze till they attain a fine color. Serve an apricot sauce with kirsch (No. 3001) separately.

← No. 3071 Omelet with Russet Apples Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3073 Pancakes a la Rossini—Meringued →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a layered gâteau of thin baked pancakes, not a skillet crêpe, and the batter behaves like a slack pâte à choux. The Epicurean assumes a professional brigade and a coal range, so the quantities and the vessels need translating.

The hinge: this is a cooked paste, not a batterFlour and boiling milk are cooked together until the mass pulls from the sides of the pan, exactly as for choux paste. If you skip the drying-out stage the yolks and whites will not hold and the sheets will not set into pliable pancakes.
Weights in modern measureNine ounces of flour is about 2 cups, four and a half ounces of butter is 9 tablespoons, and each four-ounce portion of sugar is about 1/2 cup. Ranhofer's pint is the US pint, 16 fl oz.
Ten whites to twelve yolksThe two extra yolks presumably add richness; the whites are the only leavening. Fold them in when the paste is fully cold, in two additions, or the foam collapses and the sheets bake dense.
Oven temperaturesA "brisk oven" for baking the thin sheets is roughly 400-425F; the final browning in a "hot oven" around 450F or, more practically, a broiler set high with the dish a few inches down. Glazing of this kind would normally have been done under a salamander in a kitchen like Ranhofer's, which is what a broiler replaces.
Two dishes, not oneSetting a second dish beneath the serving dish is old-fashioned insulation against a fierce hearth. A sheet pan under the serving dish does the same job and catches butter that runs over.
English coffee creamNo. 41 is crème anglaise flavored with coffee; here vanilla is added as well. Cook it to about 180F so it coats a spoon, then cool it before spreading, or it will soak the pancakes into mush.
Chopped orange peelRead this as finely chopped or grated zest of one orange, no white pith.
Maraschino and kirschMaraschino here is the dry Dalmatian cherry liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Brush it on rather than pouring, and reserve the kirsch for the apricot sauce served alongside.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's generation named dishes after the stars of the Paris stage, and Dejazet is Virginie D he the actress celebrated for her breeches roles and long career in vaudeville and comedy; a Paris theatre still carries her name. Ranhofer, who trained in France before running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, brought this habit of theatrical naming with him, and The Epicurean (1894) is full of it \ddish itself is a layered g he a he au de cr he pes, but one built from a choux-type paste rather than a liquid batter, which is why these sheets bake in the oven instead of frying on a griddle: the paste sets firm enough to stack, soak with liqueur, and glaze on top like a pudding. That it needs twelve yolks, two frying pans of matched size, and a separate apricot sauce tells you plainly it was written for a restaurant pastry department, not a home cook.