No. 3246

Marly Cake

Gateau Marly

Butter and glaze two dome-shaped pointed molds, seven inches high by six inches in diameter; fill them almost to the top with a lemon-flavored biscuit preparation, the same as for mandarin cakes (No. 3245), and surround the opening with a band of buttered paper; stand them upright on a raised-edge baking sheet and bake the biscuits in a slow oven for one hour. Remove and unmold on a pastry grate, and when cold cut the bottoms off straight and let get stale for the next twelve hours. Now lay the cakes on a grate, placing them on the cut end and brush them over lightly with apricot marmalade (No. 3675), then cover one of them entirely with pink icing (No. 102) and the other with white (No. 102). Two minutes after, without letting it get dry, divide each biscuit into eight pieces from top to bottom, pointed on the tops, and when the icing is thoroughly dry take up the pieces one by one and reconstruct them into one biscuit, only being careful to alternate the colors, having first a pink piece and then a white one; empty the inside of the biscuit as neatly as possible and fill the center with St. Honore cream (No. 49), to which pounded almonds and a little kirsch have been added, dressing it in layers alternated with cut-up macaroons soaked in rum. Invert the biscuit on a cold dish covered over with a folded napkin.

← No. 3245 Mandarin Cake Large Cakes for Entremets No. 3247 Milfoil Cake, Pompadour →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's showpiece rather than a weeknight cake: two tall sponge domes are baked, glazed in two colours, cut into wedges while the icing is still soft, then reassembled as a single striped dome and filled. The construction is the whole point, and it hinges on timing the cut.

Cut the icing at two minutes, not laterThe instruction to divide each dome into eight wedges two minutes after glazing is the hinge of the recipe. Fondant that has skinned over will chip and drag at the knife; fondant still fluid will smear and blur the colour line. Warm the blade, cut in one stroke from tip to base, and leave the wedges in place until the surface is fully dry before lifting them.
The moldsSeven inches high by six across is a tall dome — a pain de sucre or bombe mold, or a deep basin of somewhat over a quart. You need two of identical shape or the alternating wedges will not meet. Modern silicone half-spheres are too shallow; the dish depends on the pointed profile.
"Butter and glaze"Most likely butter the mold and then dust it with fine sugar (sometimes sugar and flour) so the crust releases cleanly and takes a light shell; it does not mean lining with a glaze in the modern sense. The book does not spell the term out here.
Slow ovenRead as roughly 300F; period "slow" covers something like 275–325F. A full hour at that heat for a mold this deep is right: a hotter oven sets the outside long before the centre, and a domed sponge that tall will crack or sink. The recipe also calls for a band of buttered paper around the opening.
Biscuit preparationThe cross-reference is to a whisked lemon sponge of the biscuit type; the exact method is in No. 3245 rather than here. A sponge of this sort bakes firm and dry, which is what makes the wedge-cutting possible at all.
Why the twelve hoursFresh sponge tears under a knife and crumbs into wet fondant. Twelve hours of staling firms the crumb so the wedges hold their edges and the hollowed shell keeps its shape when filled.
Icing No. 102Evidently a poured icing of the fondant type, worked warm and thin enough to coat, with one batch tinted pink; the details are in No. 102. Too hot and it goes dull and grainy; too cool and it sets before the wedges are cut.
St. Honore creamA pastry cream lightened with beaten egg white, of the St. Honore/Chiboust family, here enriched with pounded almonds and kirsch. Depending on how the whites are incorporated they may not be fully cooked, so treat it as an egg-white-containing filling; in any case the filled cake is perishable and should be kept cold and eaten the day it is assembled.
Yield and serviceA dome this size would cut into a dozen or so portions, though the recipe gives no number. It is served inverted on a cold dish covered with a folded napkin, as a cold entremets.

A Little History

The name is often said to point to Marly — the Château de Marly, Louis XIV's smaller retreat near Versailles — and, if so, it would belong to a long habit in nineteenth-century French pastry of borrowing court and place names for elaborate gateaux, alongside the Pompadour and Mandarin cakes that flank it in this same chapter; the recipe itself says nothing of the origin. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of the restaurant's repertoire, and the section it sits in, "Large Cakes for Entremets," describes work meant for a sideboard at a formal dinner: cut, glazed, hollowed and rebuilt by hand in a pastry room with staff and time. The striping trick — bake, ice in two colours, cut apart, reassemble alternating — is a piece of pure pastry-room theatre, and it shows how much of the period's grand cooking was assembly and finishing rather than baking.