No. 3224

Wafers with Curacoa Cream—Rolled

Gaufres Roulees a la Creme au Curacoa

Have in a vessel three-quarters of a pound of sugar, six ounces of flour, six ounces of corn starch, two ounces of melted butter, ten lightly beaten egg-whites and a pint of whipped cream; make with this a smooth paste, adding a little vanilla flavoring and a few tablespoonfuls of brandy. Heat on a slow fire some flat waffle-irons, butter them with a pad dipped in clarified butter, and when hot cover one side with a spoonful of the paste; close the irons and cook the waffles on both sides; after they are done roll them on three-quarter-inch in diameter rollers; remove from these and leave till cold. Serve dressed in a pyramid on a dish covered with a napkin and fill them all by means of a cornet with whipped cream flavored with a little Curacoa.

PASTRY (Patisserie).

LARGE CAKES FOR ENTREMETS (Gros Gateaux pour Entremets).

← No. 3223 Waffles Brisselets with Raspberry Cream Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3225 Almond Cake →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's rolled wafers are pizzelle or krumkake in all but name, and the whole recipe hinges on the irons and on speed. Read the batter quantities as weights, not volumes.

Weights in gramsThree-quarters of a pound of sugar is 340 g, six ounces of flour 170 g, six ounces of corn starch 170 g, two ounces of melted butter 55 g. Ten egg whites is roughly 300 g or a scant 1 1/4 cups. "A pint of whipped cream" is ambiguous: read as a pint measured after whipping it comes to about 1 cup of heavy cream beaten to soft peaks, but it may equally mean a pint of cream, whipped.
"Flat waffle-irons"Not a deep-pocketed waffle iron. These are the thin, shallow-patterned plates sold today as pizzelle or krumkake irons, which produce a wafer 1/16 inch thick that stays pliable long enough to roll. A modern electric pizzelle press set at medium is the closest equivalent; a deep Belgian iron will not work.
Heat"A slow fire" is best read as moderate and steady rather than very low: hot enough to set and colour the wafer in roughly 30 to 60 seconds, not so hot that the sugar-heavy batter scorches before it dries. Test with one wafer and adjust before committing the batch.
The hinge: roll while hotA wafer is pliable for perhaps ten seconds off the iron and then snaps. Have the 3/4-inch dowels laid out beside the iron, roll immediately, hold for a few seconds until the shape sets, then slide off. If one hardens flat, return it to the closed iron for a moment to soften.
Batter consistencyRanhofer's "smooth paste" is a thick pourable batter. Fold the whipped cream and the lightly beaten whites in last and keep them lightly beaten, not whipped stiff, or the batter will be too airy to spread thin on the plates.
Brandy and vanillaA few tablespoonfuls of brandy is 2 to 3 tbsp for this quantity; most of the alcohol cooks off in the iron. The curaçao goes only into the filling cream, where it stays raw — start with 1 to 2 tbsp per cup of cream and taste.
Filling and timingA "cornet" is a paper piping cone; any piping bag with a plain narrow tip does the job. Fill only shortly before serving, since the cream softens the wafers within an hour.
YieldThe full quantity makes a great many wafers — on the order of forty to fifty from a standard pizzelle iron, enough for the pyramid Ranhofer intends. Halving or quartering the batter is sensible for a household table.

A Little History

Gaufre is simply the French word for waffle, and thin flat waffle irons of this kind were in use across Europe for centuries before Ranhofer put them in The Epicurean (1894) — the same tool produces Italian pizzelle, Norwegian krumkake and Swiss bricelets, the last of which appears in the recipe immediately preceding this one. The rolling on wooden dowels turns a flat wafer into a vessel: it is a cream service with an edible container. Curaçao, the bitter-orange-peel liqueur from the Dutch Caribbean island, was a fashionable flavouring in nineteenth-century American and French confectionery, and Ranhofer reaches for it repeatedly in the sweet chapters of the book, which reflect his years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York.