No. 3073

Pancakes a la Rossini—Meringued

Pannequets Meringues a la Rossini

Place in a vessel half a pound of flour, one ounce of sugar, a pinch of salt, lemon peel and two tablespoonfuls of orange flower water; beat with a whip to mix well and dilute the preparation with five gills of cream, afterward adding three ounces of melted butter. Heat two small pancake pans, wipe them nicely and brush with clarified butter; pour into each one two spoonfuls of the preparation, spreading it over well and set it on a slow fire. As soon as the pancake begins to dry turn it over quickly and a few seconds later invert it on a baking sheet; finish cooking all the preparation the same way. Cover each pancake with a layer of apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and roll them up on themselves. Spread a thick layer of pastry cream (No. 46) on the bottom of a dish, dress over the pancakes, forming them into a pyramid and cover with a layer of vanilla meringue with sugar (No. 140); decorate the summit with a rosette of the meringue pushed through a channeled socket pocket and the base with a circle of hollows; besprinkle lightly with sugar and push into a very slack oven to color the meringue, then fill the hollows with currant jelly (No. 3670) and apricot marmalade (No. 3675). A Madeira sabayon sauce (No. 3096) is to be served apart.

← No. 3072 Pancakes a la Dejazet Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3074 German Pancakes →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A Ranhofer assembly rather than a single dish: thin cream crêpes, apricot filling, pastry cream base, meringue over the top, and a warm Madeira sabayon alongside. The cross-referenced numbers are all standard preparations you can substitute directly.

The hinge: the meringue oven"A very slack oven" means roughly 250-275F, and the point is to set and faintly color the meringue without melting the pastry cream or drying the pancakes. Watch it rather than time it; five to ten minutes usually gives enough color, and a brief pass under a broiler is the modern shortcut if the assembly is already warm.
Gills and poundsFive gills is two and a half cups of cream (about 600 ml); half a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups, or 227 g by weight, which is how it should be measured. Three ounces of melted butter is 85 g, six tablespoons.
Batter consistency and restingThat ratio gives a very thin, rich batter — closer to a crêpe than a pancake. Let it stand 30 minutes so the flour hydrates and the bubbles from whipping subside, or the first few will tear when turned.
Lemon peel and orange flower waterThe peel is meant to flavor and be removed, so use pared zest in strips or finely grated zest of one lemon. Orange flower water is still sold in Middle Eastern groceries and pharmacies; brands vary considerably in strength, so the recipe's two tablespoonfuls may be more than a given bottle needs — add and taste.
Pans and "slow fire"Two small pans means about 6-7 inches across; medium-low heat, not the fierce heat used for a modern crêpe, because the cream and butter in the batter will brown fast. Two spoonfuls per pan is roughly 2-3 tablespoons of batter.
The cross-referenced componentsNo. 3675 is Ranhofer's apricot marmalade; a good apricot preserve pushed through a strainer stands in for it. No. 46 is pastry cream, No. 140 a vanilla meringue of whipped whites and sugar, No. 3670 a currant jelly, No. 3096 a Madeira sabayon. Any reliable modern version of each will do.
The "circle of hollows"Pipe small nests or a ring of shallow depressions in the meringue around the base before baking, then fill them with jelly and apricot after coloring, so the two preserves stay bright and distinct.
YieldAt two to three tablespoons apiece the batter makes a large number of small pancakes — upwards of twenty — and the pyramid will serve a table of several, depending on how high it is built.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer built much of *The Epicurean* (1894) out of his thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and dishes named for singers, actresses and composers were part of the trade — Rossini, who died in 1868, was as famous in kitchens as in opera houses and lent his name to a whole family of luxurious garnishes. There is no evidence the composer ate this particular dish; "à la Rossini" in the period signals richness and prestige more than any documented connection. The construction itself is pure grand-restaurant logic: five separate preparations from elsewhere in the book, each already made in quantity in a professional kitchen, assembled to order into a pyramid that could be carried to the table with a sauce boat behind it. The orange flower water in the batter is a survival of a much older European sweet-kitchen habit, common in eighteenth-century pastry and steadily displaced by vanilla over the course of the nineteenth.