No. 3243

Jelly Cake Meringued

Gateau a la Gelee Meringue

Have eight egg yolks in a vessel with half a pound of sugar and the peel of one lemon; beat with a spatula until it becomes light and creamy, then add half a pound of flour, four ounces of melted butter and lastly eight firmly whipped egg-whites. Take some jelly cake molds eight inches in diameter and half an inch deep; butter and flour their insides and fill them to the top with the mixture, then bake in a hot oven. As soon as done unmold on grates and leave stand to cool. Place three of these cakes one on top of the other with a layer of currant jelly (No. 3670) spread between each, pare the cake round, decorate the surface with a handsome rosette of Italian meringue (No. 140) in the center, it having six to eight leaves, with an empty space in the middle; around the edges dress a continuous wreath of these rosettes, also hollow in the center. Stand the cake for two or three minutes in the oven to dry the meringue decorations, then take out and fill the cavities with apple, currant and quince jellies and apricot marmalade, alternating the different colors; set it on a lace-paper covered dish. Instead of covering the jelly cake with meringue, a piece of cardboard the same diameter as the cake, having a design of any kind cut out to form a stencil, may be used; lay it over the cake, sprinkle it entirely with finely powdered sugar, remove the cardboard carefully and the design will be found imprinted on the cake.

← No. 3242 Jamaica Cake Large Cakes for Entremets No. 3244 Lady Cake →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a genoise-type sponge baked in three shallow layers, sandwiched with currant jelly and finished with Italian meringue. The hinge is the batter: the whipped whites are all the lift there is, so folding and prompt baking decide whether the layers rise or turn to leather.

Weights in modern termsHalf a pound of sugar is 225 g (about 1 1/8 cups granulated), half a pound of flour is 225 g (about 1 3/4 cups), and four ounces of butter is one stick, 115 g, melted and cooled to barely warm. Ranhofer does not specify egg size; taking them as modern large eggs, eight yolks are roughly 150 g and eight whites roughly 240 g.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no figure; a hot oven is usually read today as somewhere around 400-425F. Layers only half an inch deep bake in roughly 8 to 12 minutes; pull them when the surface springs back and the edges just begin to shrink from the pan.
The pansJelly cake molds eight inches across and half an inch deep are shallow layer tins. Standard 8-inch round pans work if you divide the batter into three equal portions by weight, roughly 320 g each; the batter should sit no deeper than half an inch or the timing changes entirely.
Peel of one lemonZest only, no white pith. The recipe puts it in with the yolks and sugar from the start; rubbing it into the sugar first releases more of the oils. Beating yolks, sugar and zest to the ribbon takes 6 to 8 minutes in a stand mixer, and longer by hand with a spatula as written.
Folding orderFold the flour in first, then the melted butter, then the whites, working quickly with a large spoon or scraper. Melted butter is the deflating ingredient here; add it in a thin stream down the side of the bowl rather than pouring it into the center.
Italian meringueNo. 140 is whites beaten with hot cooked sugar syrup rather than raw sugar; check Ranhofer's own stated degree rather than assuming soft ball. The hot syrup partly sets the whites, so the finished decoration is stable enough to pipe and hold its shape, where a French meringue of raw whites and sugar is more likely to weep under the jellies.
Drying the decorationTwo or three minutes in the oven is meant to set a skin on the meringue, not to color it; longer and the sponge beneath dries out.
The fillingsCurrant jelly between the layers, then apple, currant and quince jellies and apricot marmalade in the hollows of the rosettes for color contrast. Warm each just enough to spoon, and let them set before serving or they run down the meringue.
YieldOne three-layer cake, 8 inches across and quite shallow, cutting into 10 to 12 slices as an entremets course rather than a heavy dessert.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894, after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is arranged as a working reference: nearly every recipe points elsewhere in its own numbering, as this one does to the currant jelly at No. 3670 and the Italian meringue at No. 140. That cross-referencing is the mark of a professional kitchen where basic preparations were kept on hand and assembled to order. The cake itself is a separated-egg sponge — the yolks beaten with sugar, the whites whipped apart and folded in last — leavened by egg alone rather than by chemical raising, split into thin layers of the kind American cooks were then calling jelly cake; the piped Italian meringue with its hollow centers filled with contrasting jellies belongs to the display tradition of the nineteenth-century restaurant, where a dessert brought to the table was expected to be looked at before it was eaten. The alternative finish, a stencil cut from cardboard and dusted with powdered sugar, is the same idea reduced to something a smaller kitchen could manage in a minute.