No. 3091

Poupelin

Pour one pint of water into a saucepan, adding a pinch of salt, an ounce of sugar and two ounces of butter set the saucepan on the fire and at the first boil fill up the liquid with as much flour as it can possibly absorb; then dry it on the fire, proceeding the same as a cream cake paste (No. 132). Afterward incorporate six whole eggs, one at a time, and six yolks, working the paste thoroughly. Pour this preparation into a buttered charlotte mold; cook in a slack oven, and when done unmold and allow to cool on a grate; empty the inside only, leaving a crust a quarter of an inch in thickness, and fill the empty interior with frangipane cream (No. 44), alternating with a layer of salpicon of fruits. Return it to the oven for half an hour and just when prepared to serve remove and turn it over on a dish. Serve an apricot and kirsch sauce (No. 3001) in a sauce tureen at the same time.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a very large batch of choux paste baked as a single hollow shell, then filled and reheated. Ranhofer wrote it for a restaurant brigade, so scale and vessel are the first things to settle.

The hinge: dry the paste properlyAfter the flour goes in, keep the pan on the heat and beat until the paste comes away clean and films the bottom of the pan, about two to three minutes. Then take it off the heat and let it cool to warm before the eggs go in one at a time, or they will scramble and the shell will not rise.
Scale and yieldA pint of water, six whole eggs and six yolks, and the flour it absorbs give somewhere around 3 pounds of paste — enough for a shell serving ten or so. Halving the recipe works cleanly if you want a domestic-sized dessert.
"As much flour as it can possibly absorb"The recipe gives no figure; for a pint of water expect somewhere in the region of 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups, and stop when the mass balls up and leaves the sides of the pan. Worked to this instruction it will be a stiffer, drier paste than a standard modern choux, which suits a hollow case.
Butter and sugar are deliberately leanTwo ounces of butter to a pint of water is a good deal less than a modern choux paste carries — under half, often nearer a quarter. The low fat plausibly helps give a shell firm enough to be hollowed out and filled, so there is no reason to increase it.
Charlotte moldA plain tinned pail-shaped mold, slightly flared, usually about 1 1/2 to 2 quarts, though larger sizes exist and this quantity of paste wants one of the bigger ones. Butter it heavily; a straight-sided cake tin or a deep charlotte-shaped soufflé dish substitutes, though a flared mold unmolds more willingly.
"Slack oven"The book does not define the term; in nineteenth-century usage it generally means a gentle oven, roughly 275-325F. That is unusually low for choux, and a mass this thick would need to dry through without scorching. Modern practice would be to start hotter, around 400-425F for 15 minutes, then drop to 325F for the remaining 45 minutes or more, until the shell is deep brown and sounds hollow. Do not open the oven in the first half hour.
Frangipane cream (No. 44)In The Epicurean this is a pastry cream enriched with butter, almonds and crushed macaroons — not the raw almond-butter frangipane sold under that name now. A thick almond pastry cream is the right substitute.
Salpicon of fruitsFruit cut into small, even dice — candied or poached, and often macerated in liqueur. Drain it well or the filling will loosen and soak the crust.
The reheating and serviceHalf an hour in the oven is to warm the filling through, not to bake it, so keep the heat moderate and cover the top if it colors. Turning it over onto the dish means the flat base becomes the top; have a warm platter ready, since a filled shell handled cold will crack.

A Little History

Poupelin is one of the old names of French pastry: the word appears in medieval and early modern French for a light baked cake, and by the nineteenth century it had settled on this specific thing — a choux paste baked in a mold, hollowed, and filled with cream. It is often said to have been a standard of the Carême-era repertoire, and Ranhofer, who trained in France before running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, simply carried it over in 1894 as one of the hot entremets a large restaurant was expected to produce. It sits in a run of puddings and soufflés because that was its place on the menu: a warm sweet served after the roast, substantial, built from components the pastry station already had on hand — choux paste, frangipane cream, candied fruit, an apricot sauce. The technique is the same one behind the éclair and the gougère, put to the unusual purpose of making an edible container. The name has largely fallen out of use, and the single molded case for the table is no longer a fixture of the pastry repertoire.