No. 3257

Roederer Cake

Gateau Roederer

Pound six ounces of almonds and six ounces of pistachios with a little milk to make a fine, soft paste. Put one pound of sugar in a basin, slowly add sixteen whole eggs, and beat until very light, heating it slightly on hot embers or on a very slow fire; put in the almond paste and continue beating for a few moments longer, then mix in with a small skimmer three-quarters of a pound of rice flour and lastly half a pound of melted butter. Butter a pound cake mold, line it with paper and fill it three-quarters full with the preparation; push into a very slack oven to cook for an hour and a quarter. When done remove and invert it on a grate to cool, then detach the cake from the paper and cut it across in two; fill it with some Bavarian cream (No. 3135), into which mix three ounces of pistachios pounded with a little vanilla syrup; cover the entire cake with hot apricot marmalade (No. 3675); coat it with pistachio fondant (No. 58) and bestrew immediately with finely shredded green pistachios; let the fondant dry, then slide the cake on a lace-paper covered board or dish and surround the base with a row of small cream cakes (No. 3295), glazed with sugar cooked to "crack" (No. 171) and sprinkled with shredded pistachios.

← No. 3256 Queen Cake Large Cakes for Entremets No. 3258 Sand Cake →

For the Modern Kitchen

A genoise-type sponge raised entirely by egg, then split, filled and enrobed. The batter is the difficult part; the assembly is patience.

The hinge: the egg foamSixteen whole eggs and a pound of sugar are the only leavening. Warm the bowl gently (a pan of hot water is the modern equivalent of "hot embers") until the mixture reaches about 110F, then whip until it triples and holds a thick ribbon. Fold the nut paste, rice flour and butter in with the lightest hand possible, and have the mould buttered and papered before you start.
"Very slack oven"Around 275-300F. At this size the cake needs the full hour and a quarter and a low heat so the centre sets before the outside dries; test with a skewer rather than the clock alone.
Quantities in modern terms6 oz almonds and 6 oz pistachios (about 1 1/4 cups each), 1 lb sugar (2 1/4 cups), 12 oz rice flour (roughly 2 3/4 cups, though rice flour varies in packing, so weigh it), 8 oz melted butter, cooled to barely warm before folding.
Rice flourNot glutinous or sweet rice flour. Use plain white rice flour, which gives the fine, slightly sandy crumb the recipe is after; wheat flour will make a different and heavier cake.
Pounding the nutsA food processor does the work, but pulse in short bursts with the milk added early, or the almonds turn to oily butter. Blanch and skin the pistachios if you want the green to read clearly in the paste and the garnish.
"Pound cake mold"The recipe gives no dimensions. Use a deep, straight-sided tin big enough that the batter, which is bulky once the eggs are whipped, comes only three-quarters of the way up. Line the base and sides with paper as directed; a sponge this rich sticks.
The Bavarian cream fillingRanhofer cross-refers to his own Bavarian cream (No. 3135); a Bavarian cream of this period is generally a cooked custard set with gelatin. Cook the custard gently and cool it to the point where it just begins to thicken before filling, or it will run out of the split cake.
Sugar "cooked to crack"The crack degree of Ranhofer's sugar-boiling table (No. 171), in the region of 290-310F, used to glaze the small cream cakes ringing the base. Work quickly and off the heat, and watch it, as the syrup will darken if it goes much beyond this point.
YieldA large entremets cake; the recipe gives no number of servings, but a mould this size will cut generously, plus the ring of small cream cakes. The garnish is optional; the split, filled and fondant-coated cake stands on its own.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is full of dishes named for the restaurant's clientele, for visiting dignitaries and for the luxury goods it sold. Roederer is the Reims Champagne house, and champagne marques of this sort were familiar on fashionable American tables in the later nineteenth century; naming a pistachio-green entremets after a marque is a common enough kind of flattery, though no documented link between this cake and the firm survives beyond the name. The construction is haute-patisserie of the period: a nut-enriched sponge made on rice flour rather than wheat, split and filled, masked with apricot, coated in tinted fondant, and then set on a lace-paper board and fenced with small glazed pastries so that the whole thing arrives as an architectural object. Rice flour turns up elsewhere in Ranhofer's cake chapter -- the sand cake that follows this one is next in the sequence -- and it gives a drier, finer crumb, though Ranhofer does not say why he chose it here.