No. 3258

Sand Cake

Gateau Sable

Mix twelve ounces of powdered sugar and four ounces of vanilla sugar (No. 3165) in a basin with sixteen egg-yolks; beat until light, then add half a pound of flour and half a pound of fecula, sifted together, one pound of melted butter, and lastly the sixteen beaten whites; bake this in a slack oven in a pound cake or manque mold, buttered and lined with paper, and when done to perfection take it out and invert on a grate to cool. Then cover the cake with well-reduced apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and ice over with water icing flavored with rum (No. 102). Decorate with candied fruits and dress on a dish covered with lace paper.

← No. 3257 Roederer Cake Large Cakes for Entremets No. 3259 Savarin a la Valence →

For the Modern Kitchen

A butter-rich sand cake in the French manner, leavened entirely by egg foam. The quantities are professional: this is a single very large cake or, more practically, two.

FeculaRanhofer's fécule is potato starch (German Kartoffelmehl); note that what is sold today as "potato flour" is dried whole potato, not the same thing. Half flour and half starch is what gives the cake its dry, faintly gritty crumb — the "sand" of the name. Cornstarch is a workable substitute.
A slack ovenSlack means cool: 300–325°F. A cake this large and this rich sets slowly, and at anything higher the outside will be dark before the middle is done. Reckon on an hour and a quarter or more, and test with a skewer.
The hinge: butter temperatureA pound of melted butter folded into an egg foam will collapse it if hot. Melt it and let it cool until barely fluid and no warmer than lukewarm, then pour it down the side of the bowl in a thin stream while folding.
Order of foldingThe whites go in last, after the butter, which is unusual and unforgiving. Fold the butter into the yolk-sugar-flour mass first, then lighten with a quarter of the whites before folding in the rest. There is no baking powder anywhere in this recipe; the whites are the only lift.
Vanilla sugarNo. 3165 is Ranhofer's vanilla sugar, presumably sugar pounded and sifted with vanilla bean. Four ounces of it plus twelve of plain sugar comes to a pound total; if you have none, use a pound of sugar and the scraped seeds of two beans.
Manqué moldA round tin with slightly flaring sides, roughly the depth of a modern deep cake pan. A 9- or 10-inch springform, buttered and lined on the bottom with parchment, does the job. Butter and paper both are worth the trouble — sixteen yolks and a pound of butter will stick.
Water icing with rumNo. 102 appears to be a plain water icing of powdered sugar moistened to a thick pouring consistency, here flavoured with rum. Brush the reduced apricot marmalade on while the cake is still slightly warm so it sets as a seal, then ice over the cooled glaze.
YieldThe original gives none. Something like four and a half to five pounds of batter: one very tall cake serving 16 to 20, or two ordinary 8-inch cakes, which bake more evenly.

A Little History

Gâteau de sable and its German cousin Sandkuchen take their name from the texture rather than any ingredient — the substitution of potato starch for part of the wheat flour produces a crumb that is short and slightly granular on the tongue, and both traditions describe it as sandy. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years and published The Epicurean in 1894, files it among the large cakes intended as an entremets: sweet courses sent up near the end of a long service, made in one big mold, glazed, decorated with candied fruit and set on a lace-paper doily. The style of the recipe is characteristic of the book — sixteen yolks and a pound of butter assume a brigade and a standing order, and the cross-references to numbered preparations for vanilla sugar, apricot marmalade and rum icing assume those things are already made and sitting on a shelf. The manqué mold it calls for is often said to have been named after a Parisian pastry cook's failed génoise, sold under the name manqué — a story generally repeated but not documented.