No. 3097

Countess Pudding

Pouding a la Comtesse

Prepare a small biscuit preparation the same as for lady fingers (No. 3377); spread it out on a sheet of buttered paper to the thickness of three-sixteenths of an inch, and cook in a slack oven, being careful to keep it soft. As soon as done remove from the oven, take off the paper and cut the cake into four-inch wide bands down its entire length; cover each one of these bands with a layer of strawberry marmalade passed through a sieve, and roll them up into cylindricals an inch and a half in diameter; wrap them at once in paper to tighten and keep firm, and let them rest for one hour, then cut them into slices a quarter of an inch thick. Butter a dome-shaped cylindrical mold, and with the rolled slices of cake cover the interior sides, then fill the empty hollow with a Saxony souffle pudding preparation (No. 3107); place it in a saucepan with boiling water to half its height and let come to a boil, then remove the saucepan from the fire, and push it into a slack oven. After forty minutes take it out and let cool off for a few moments, then unmold on a dish, and cover with hot apricot marmalade (No. 3675). Serve a sauceboat of Richelieu and liquor sauce made as follows: Heat a pint of thirty-degree syrup, and remove it from the fire, thicken with a little arrowroot dissolved in cold water, and add a few cherries (demi-sucre) and shredded pistachios; flavor with kirsch.

← No. 3096 Cabinet Pudding with Sabayon Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3098 Franklyn Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a numbered cross-reference system, so this reads as an assembly job. Three components are involved: a thin sponge (lady-finger batter baked as a sheet), a jam-rolled lining, and a soufflé pudding batter steamed inside it.

The hinge: keep the sponge pliableThe lining depends entirely on the sheet cake still bending without cracking. Bake it just until set and dry to the touch, pull it while it still springs back, and roll it warm — a sheet that has crisped at the edges will shatter when you try to form the cylinder.
Oven temperaturesA "slack" oven is a cool one, roughly 275-300F. Use it both for the sponge sheet and for the finished pudding in its water bath. Nothing here wants colour.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm. Spread the batter on parchment on a rimmed sheet pan and level it with an offset spatula; parchment can be used in place of the buttered paper the recipe calls for.
Saxony souffle puddingNo. 3107 is a souffle pudding of the usual type: a flour-and-butter panade enriched with egg yolks and lightened with beaten whites, closer to a baked souffle than to a custard. Fold the whites in at the last moment and fill the lined mould at once, since the batter starts deflating immediately.
"Place it in a saucepan with boiling water"This is a bain-marie, not a baked casserole. Set the mould in a deep pan, pour boiling water to halfway up its sides, bring it to a boil on the stove as the recipe directs, then transfer the whole pan to the oven for the 40 minutes. Do not let the water boil hard in the oven or the pudding will set coarse and weep.
Thirty-degree syrupA syrup of about 30 degrees Baume — roughly equal weights of sugar and water, boiled briefly. A pint of it makes far more sauce than one pudding needs; halve it.
Demi-sucre cherriesLightly candied cherries, only partly saturated with syrup, sold for pastry work. Good-quality amarena or brandied cherries stand in; the fluorescent glace kind do not.
Thickening with arrowrootSlake it in cold water and add it off the heat as directed, then bring the sauce back only to a bare simmer. Arrowroot thins if held at a boil, and the kirsch should go in last so it is not cooked off.
Mould and yieldA "dome-shaped cylindrical mold" is of the charlotte or bombe type; the recipe gives no capacity, but something in the region of 1 to 1.5 quarts suits the quantities. Unmould whole and cut at the table.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working record of that cuisine, which is why entries like this one are written as cross-references rather than as standalone recipes. Puddings a la comtesse, a la duchesse, a la royale and the like belong to a nineteenth-century French convention of naming garnished dishes after ranks and titles; the names signalled a formula to a trained cook rather than commemorating any particular countess. The construction itself — a mould lined with jam-rolled sponge and filled with a hot soufflé — is a hot cousin of the charlotte russe, and the finishing touch of a kirsch-flavoured syrup sauce studded with candied cherries and pistachios shows the period's taste for a dessert that arrived at the table looking deliberately engineered.