No. 3259

Savarin a la Valence

Butter a medium-sized Savarin mold, dredge the bottom with cut-up almonds and fill it half full with Savarin paste (No. 148) into which has been incorporated candied orange peel cut in the shape of small dice. Let it rise in a mild temperature until it reaches the edges, then bake in a slack oven. As soon as it is done remove from the oven, pare it even and unmold on a grate; pour some orange syrup over, cover with apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and glaze with fondant (No. 58), flavored with orange. When the icing is cold slip the Savarin on to a bottom made of office paste (No. 143) covered with green sugar (No. 172), and dress it on a dish. Decorate the top of the cake with a wreath of angelica lozenges and cherries (demi-sucre); fill the center with Chantilly cream (No. 50) flavored with orange sugar (No. 3165) and place on top a light sugar sultana (No. 3193), then serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional pastry brigade with a numbered reference book at hand; nearly every component is a cross-reference. Here is what those numbers mean and where the dish can go wrong.

Savarin pasteA rich yeast batter, essentially a baba dough: strong flour, eggs, milk, yeast and a good deal of soft butter beaten in, slack enough to pour rather than knead. It is a batter, not a dough you can handle.
Fill only half fullThis is the hinge. The mold is filled halfway and proved until the batter reaches the rim, which is roughly a doubling. Overfilled molds collapse in the oven and lose the clean ring shape the finished presentation depends on.
"Slack oven"A cool oven; the book gives no figures, but slack is generally read as somewhere around 300-325F. Savarin paste is enriched enough to color quickly, and a hotter oven sets the crust before the crumb is through.
Proving temperature"a mild temperature" means a gently warm spot rather than a hot one; the book gives no figure. Butter-heavy yeast batters proved too warm can go greasy and the crumb coarse.
Orange syrupA savarin soaking syrup is roughly equal weights sugar and water with orange juice and zest, often with orange liqueur added off the heat. Soak while the cake is still warm; it absorbs far more then than cold.
Apricot marmalade and fondantThe marmalade is a sieved, boiled-down apricot glaze brushed on hot to seal the surface. Poured fondant is sugar syrup cooked to the soft-ball stage, worked until opaque, then rewarmed to about 100F with a little syrup so it pours; hotter and it dulls and cracks.
Office paste and green sugarOffice paste is a stiff sweet paste used in the pastry department for decorative bases and cut work, and colored sugar is granulated sugar tinted with a drop of coloring. Both are display work; the cake is complete without them.
Angelica and demi-sucre cherriesAngelica is candied stem, still sold in specialist shops but easily left out. "Demi-sucre" cherries are lightly candied and softer than glace cherries; ordinary candied cherries substitute.
Sultana and yieldThe "light sugar sultana" (No. 3193) appears to be a sugar-work ornament, purely decorative. Ranhofer gives no yield; a medium savarin ring would serve roughly eight to ten, and the whipped cream should go into the center at the last moment.

A Little History

The savarin is a nineteenth-century Parisian refinement of the baba: the same yeast batter, baked in a plain ring mold rather than a tall fluted one and soaked with syrup, and it is generally traced to the Julien brothers, who are said to have named it for Brillat-Savarin. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working record of that kitchen, which is why the recipe reads as an assembly sheet: the paste, the marmalade, the fondant, the Chantilly and the spun-sugar ornament each existed already as a numbered preparation another cook was responsible for. "A la Valence" points at Valencia oranges, and the whole treatment, candied peel in the crumb, orange syrup, orange fondant, orange sugar in the cream, is a single flavor pursued through every layer, which is exactly the kind of set-piece entremets a late-Victorian banquet expected to see carried in whole on a dish.