No. 3219

Surprise of Fruits, Frothy Sauce

Surprise aux Fruits, Sauce Mousseuse

Butter a charlotte mold and fill it three-quarters full with either baba paste (No. 129) or plain Savarin paste (No. 148); let it rise as high as the top in a mild temperature; bake the cake in a moderate oven and five minutes after it has been taken from the oven pare the top off straight, then turn it over on a pastry grate and soak it with a syrup flavored with lemon and maraschino. When the cake is thoroughly cold return it to the mold and slice off the bottom so as to be able to empty it out, leaving only a thickness of five-eighths of an inch at the top and sides; fill this hollow space with layers of small strawberries and pour over them a cooked Italian meringue (No. 140) flavored with cold burned punch. Close the opening on the cake with the removed slice and invert it on a cold dish, covering it over with a frothy sauce prepared as follows:

Frothy Sauce.—Pour into a tin basin three gills of English cream flavored either with vanilla or lemon (No. 42), having it slightly consistent and cold; beat it up vigorously for a quarter of an hour on ice and when light and frothy add two or three spoonfuls of firm and well-drained whipped cream mixed in with a spoon.

← No. 3218 Suedoise of Apples and Pears Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3220 Conde Tart →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his numbered base recipes to hand and a pastry brigade to execute them. Reduced to its parts, this is a yeast-raised savarin baked in a charlotte mold, soaked in liqueur syrup, hollowed out, packed with strawberries and meringue, and sauced with lightened crème anglaise.

Order of workThe hinge is soaking the cake warm and hollowing it cold. Pare the domed top flat about five minutes out of the oven while the crumb is still open and thirsty, soak it then, and only cut into the sides once it is fully chilled and firm — a warm savarin will tear when you dig it out.
Baba and Savarin pasteBoth are rich yeasted batters, closer to brioche than cake, and both are wet enough to be pushed rather than kneaded. Savarin paste is the plain one; baba adds currants or raisins. Fill the mold three-quarters full and let it rise to the rim — "a mild temperature" means a warm room, not a proofing box run hot.
OvenThe book asks only for a moderate oven and gives no temperature; around 350F is the usual modern reading. A charlotte mold is deep, so allow a longer bake than a shallow one and test with a skewer at the center rather than trusting color.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so three gills of English cream is 1½ cups. The whipped cream folded in at the end is a couple of spoonfuls, no more — the sauce should pour, not mound.
English creamNo. 42 is crème anglaise: a stirred custard of yolks, sugar and milk or cream taken to the point where it coats a spoon, around 180F, and never boiled. "Slightly consistent" means barely thickened; it has to stay pourable after fifteen minutes of beating.
Beating on iceThe quarter-hour of vigorous beating in a tin basin set on ice is aerating the cold custard by hand. A mixer on medium does the same in two or three minutes, but keep the bowl cold or the froth collapses before it reaches the table.
Italian meringueNo. 140 is whites whipped with a sugar syrup boiled to the soft-ball stage, about 240F, poured in hot. The hot syrup partly cooks the whites, which helps make this filling stable enough to sit inside the cake.
Cold burned punchPunch brûlé — a mix of rum or brandy with sugar, citrus and spice, set alight and then cooled. Substituting a spoonful or two of dark rum with lemon zest gets close; maraschino liqueur, which flavors the soaking syrup, is the dry Luxardo type, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries.
Hollowing and yieldFive-eighths of an inch is the wall thickness to leave at the top and sides; the disc cut from the bottom is put back to close the opening, and finishes underneath once the cake is inverted onto the dish. Assemble it the day it is eaten — the soaked crumb goes soggy overnight.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in some 3,500 numbered recipes that cross-reference each other. A surprise in this tradition is any dish whose interior is concealed until it is cut — the savarin shell here does the same work that a hollowed loaf or a pastry case does elsewhere. The savarin itself descends from the rum baba, generally traced to the Parisian pâtissier Stohrer in the eighteenth century, with the ring-and-syrup form named in the nineteenth for Brillat-Savarin. That Ranhofer soaks his in maraschino and fills it with strawberries and flamed-punch meringue is very much of his moment: late-century American restaurant cooking layered liqueurs the way an earlier generation layered spices, and the frothy sauce, whipped by hand on ice for a quarter of an hour, is a reminder that the lightness of these desserts was bought entirely with labor.