No. 3120

Souffles in Cases with Vanilla or Orange—Small

Petits Souffles en Caisses a la Vanille ou a l'Orange

Put into a vessel four spoonfuls of flour, a pinch of fecula, four spoonfuls of sugar and a grain of salt; dilute with two and a half gills of milk, then strain it into a saucepan, adding a lump of butter the size of an egg and a piece of vanilla; stir on a slow fire until it comes to a boil and when smooth reduce until it detaches easily from the saucepan, then take out the vanilla and let the preparation get almost cold before stirring in another piece of butter and five to six egg-yolks one after the other, while continuing to beat briskly; lastly add the beaten whites and three spoonfuls of whipped cream. With this mixture fill some souffle cases (Fig. 584) two-thirds full, range them on a small baking sheet and place in a slack oven to cook for twenty minutes. Serve just as quickly as they leave the oven.

With Orange.—Instead of vanilla, flavor the souffles with two tablespoonfuls of orange sugar (No. 3165).

← No. 3119 Souffle of Chocolate Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3121 Souffle of Rice with Maraschino →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a classic pastry-cream-based soufflé, thickened enough to hold in paper cases rather than a deep dish. The measurements are Ranhofer's kitchen shorthand, so a few need pinning down before you start.

SpoonfulsRanhofer's plain "spoonful" is generally taken to mean a tablespoon, though he also writes "tablespoonfuls" elsewhere in the same recipe. On that reading, four of flour is roughly 1 oz (30 g), four of sugar about 2 oz (55 g), and three of whipped cream about 45 ml, folded in loose.
GillsTwo and a half gills is 1¼ cups, or about 300 ml, of milk. The batter should end up thick enough to pull away from the pan in a mass.
FeculaFécule is potato starch. A pinch gives the panade a little extra body and a softer set; cornstarch is the closest substitute.
Butter "the size of an egg"About 2 oz (55 g). The recipe does not say how much butter goes in the second time, only "another piece"; a tablespoon of soft, not melted, butter stirred into the cooled base is a reasonable reading.
Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is 300-325F. These are small and shallow, so twenty minutes at that temperature is realistic; a hot oven will set the crust before the centre rises.
Egg whitesThe recipe never says how many whites. Use the whites of the same five or six eggs, beaten to soft peaks — stiff, dry whites will not fold into a stiff pastry-cream base without deflating.
Souffle casesFig. 584 shows a soufflé case; the "en caisses" of the title indicates the small paper cases used for this service. Small buttered and sugared ramekins will stand in; fill two-thirds full as instructed, because a pastry-cream soufflé rises high.
Vanilla bean"A piece of vanilla" is a length of bean, split, infused in the milk and then fished out. Half a bean per 1¼ cups milk is generous; extract stirred into the cooled base is the fallback.
Orange sugarNo. 3165 is Ranhofer's orange sugar, made on the usual nineteenth-century principle of working sugar against the zest so it takes up the oil. If you substitute grated zest beaten into caster sugar, use much less zest than the two tablespoons of orange sugar called for, since the sugar is mostly sugar.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest several small cases. The instruction to serve the moment they leave the oven is not decoration — the rise is steam, and it begins collapsing within a few minutes.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written out in French-kitchen order, which is why soufflés appear as a run of numbered variations cross-referenced to each other. The type made here — a soufflé built on a cooked flour-and-milk panade rather than on fruit purée or beaten yolks alone — is the sturdier restaurant version: it can be mixed ahead of the whites and holds its shape in individual cases. The orange variation depends on sucre d'orange, zest-rubbed sugar, a nineteenth-century pantry preparation used before citrus extracts were widely available.