No. 3256

Queen Cake

Gateau Reine

Beat up a pound of butter with twelve egg-yolks, adding a pound of sugar, a little at a time, half a pound of ground almonds, half a pound of fecula and then seven beaten whites, one quart in volume of drained whipped cream, vanilla or lemon flavored, a few candied orange flowers and a grain of salt, the cream to be added lastly. Bake in a slack oven in a spiral mold glazed with sugar. After the cake is unmolded and cold cover with apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and ice with maraschino icing (No. 102). No good results can be expected unless good cream is used.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's Queen Cake is essentially a very rich almond-and-starch batter lightened twice, first with beaten whites and then with a full quart of whipped cream. Nothing here is difficult, but the order of operations is the whole recipe.

The hinge: the cream goes in last, and gentlyThe quart of whipped cream is the leavening as much as the whites are; there is no baking powder anywhere in the formula. Fold it in at the very end, in three additions, and stop while streaks are still faintly visible. Ranhofer's closing line about good cream is literal — cream that will not hold a soft peak, or that has been over-whipped to grain, gives a heavy cake.
FeculaNineteenth-century French usage means potato starch (fécule de pommes de terre). Half a pound is about 1½ cups. Cornstarch is the nearest substitute and behaves similarly, though potato starch gives the drier, shorter crumb Ranhofer expected. This cake contains no wheat flour at all.
"Drained" whipped creamCream was whipped and left in a sieve or cloth so the loose liquid ran off, leaving a stiffer foam. Modern cream is more consistent; whip roughly 2 cups of heavy cream to soft-firm peaks and you will have close to a quart in volume.
A slack ovenAbout 300°F, no hotter than 325°F. A batter this rich in butter and starch browns long before the centre sets. In a large mould expect well over an hour; test with a skewer at the thickest part of the ring.
The spiral mouldMost likely a fluted turban or Turk's-head mould; a bundt or kugelhopf tin is the closest modern equivalent. "Glazed with sugar" is best read as buttered generously and then dusted with granulated sugar rather than flour, which gives a thin crisp shell and releases cleanly.
Candied orange flowersSugared orange blossoms are effectively unobtainable now. A tablespoon of orange-flower water, or finely chopped candied orange peel, carries the same intention. Use orange-flower water sparingly; it turns soapy fast.
Apricot marmalade and maraschino icingThe cross-references are to separate recipes not given here; they are presumably a strained apricot glaze and an icing flavoured with maraschino liqueur. Ranhofer specifies that the cake be unmolded and cold before either is applied, or the icing will slide.
Scale and yieldA pound of butter, a pound of sugar, twelve yolks and seven whites is a banquet-sized cake — 16 to 20 servings from a large mould, or two ordinary bundt tins. Halving the recipe works, but you will need to use six yolks and four whites and accept the rounding.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a chapter of large cakes intended as entremets — the sweet course sent up near the end of a long service. Gâteau reine is simply "queen cake"; the English "queen cakes" of the eighteenth century were small currant cakes and are a different thing entirely. What marks this version as belonging to the grand restaurant kitchen is the potato starch and ground almonds standing in for flour, and the quart of whipped cream doing the work that chemical leavening did in much domestic American baking of the same decade — a technique that assumes fresh heavy cream, cold working conditions and time.