No. 3122

Souffle with Raspberries

Souffle aux Framboises

Place seven ounces of rather stiff raspberry jelly in a small basin and mix slowly in with it seven ounces of powdered sugar so as to obtain a consistent preparation, then incorporate one after the other four to five unbeaten egg-whites, stirring up the whole vigorously with a whisk for twenty minutes. When this is frothy and firm color it with a few drops of vegetable carmine (No. 37) and pour it into a souffle pan (Fig. 182) to cook for forty minutes in a very slack oven. Five minutes before removing the souffle from the oven glaze it with sugar, set it on a hot dish and cover with a large hot dish cover; serve it immediately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

An unusual soufflé: no yolks, no flour, no béchamel — just fruit jelly, sugar and raw whites beaten together into a meringue stiff enough to hold itself up in the oven. That makes the whisking, not the baking, the part that decides whether it works.

The hinge is the twenty minutes of whiskingBecause there is no starch or custard base, the only structure comes from the sugar-and-jelly meringue itself. A stand mixer will get there faster than twenty minutes by hand, but go by appearance rather than the clock: stop when the mass holds a firm, glossy peak that does not slump.
Add the whites one at a timeThe whites go in unbeaten, absorbed one by one into the thick jelly-and-sugar paste. Dumping them in together gives a slack mixture that will not whip up; each addition should be fully incorporated before the next.
WeightsSeven ounces of jelly is about 200 g, roughly two-thirds of a cup; seven ounces of powdered sugar is about 200 g, closer to 1 3/4 cups by volume since it is aerated. Four to five egg whites is about 4-6 oz / 120-170 g.
"Raspberry jelly"He means a firm, seedless set preserve of the kind that holds a shape when spooned out, not a loose modern jam or a gelatin dessert. A good seedless raspberry preserve, warmed briefly and pushed through a sieve, is the closest equivalent.
"A very slack oven"250-275F. Slow heat is deliberate here — this is closer to baking a meringue than puffing a soufflé, and a hot oven will set the crust and then crack and weep it.
Vegetable carmineRanhofer's No. 37 is his red coloring; carmine reds of the period were generally cochineal-based. Any modern food coloring does the same job, and with real raspberry preserve the color is usually good enough to skip it.
The soufflé panThe soufflé pan -- Fig. 182 is the straight-sided soufflé mold of the period. A 1 1/2-quart porcelain soufflé dish, buttered and sugared, works; fill it no more than three-quarters full.
Glazing with sugarFive minutes before the end, dust the top with powdered sugar so it melts to a thin glaze. Watch it — at this oven temperature the sugar wants coaxing, and a few seconds under a broiler will scorch it.
Yield and serviceProbably four to six, though Ranhofer gives no number. The hot dish cover is not ceremony: it holds heat and keeps drafts off a structure that begins deflating the moment it leaves the oven, so plate and serve without pause.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where the hot entremets section runs to dozens of souffl ing. The fruit soufflés like this one are made simply of sweetened fruit pulp and whites, without the flour-thickened base familiar today. Raspberry jelly rather than fresh fruit was likely the practical choice in a professional kitchen — it kept year-round, carried concentrated flavor, and brought its own set, which may be why the recipe can dispense with a base entirely. The instruction to whisk for a full twenty minutes is a reminder of how much of a Gilded Age restaurant kitchen ran on the arms of its cooks; the same result now takes a machine and a fraction of the time.