No. 3277

Couques

Lay a pound of brioche paste (No. 130) in a vessel, place it in the ice-box, working it from time to time to give it plenty of body; when this is firm put it on a floured table and divide it in two parts; draw them lengthwise to form into strings and cut each of these into fifteen even pieces; form all of them into balls and shape them like rolls three and a half inches long; range on a baking sheet slightly apart, leave to rise in a mild temperature and when double their volume egg over and bake in a good oven. Just when serving open them on one side and insert a little good, slightly salted butter. Send to the table very hot.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A brioche roll in the plainest possible dress: thirty small rolls from a pound of dough, split hot and buttered at the table. Everything depends on the dough being cold when you shape it.

Brioche paste (No. 130)Ranhofer assumes you have his brioche dough already made and rested. Any standard rich brioche will do, but keep the butter proportion high; the roll has no other flavour to hide behind.
"Plenty of body"The chilling and periodic folding in the ice-box is the hinge of the recipe. Cold, well-worked brioche dough shapes cleanly and holds its cylinder; dough at room temperature smears, leaks butter and bakes into flat lozenges.
Size and yieldA pound of dough divided into thirty pieces gives rolls of roughly 15 g each, shaped to three and a half inches long — finger rolls, not breakfast buns. Thirty is the yield stated by the recipe; Ranhofer gives no number of covers.
"A mild temperature" for risingRanhofer gives no figure; something in the region of 75-80F suits enriched dough. Proofed much warmer it will weep butter before it doubles; a turned-off oven with the light on is close enough.
"A good oven"No temperature is given; roughly 400-425F is a fair modern reading, and rolls this small should take somewhere around 10-14 minutes. Pull them when the egg wash is deep brown and glossy rather than waiting for any interior signal.
Egg washThe recipe says only "egg over"; a whole egg beaten with a pinch of salt will give the shine expected here. Apply thinly with a brush and avoid letting it pool at the base, where it glues the roll to the sheet.
The butter at the end"Slightly salted" is the recipe's own wording, and in a plain roll like this the butter carries most of the seasoning. Cut the rolls only as they go out, so the steam inside melts the butter rather than escaping.

A Little History

Couque is a Franco-Belgian word for a sweet or enriched bread, generally taken as a cousin to the Dutch koek and the German Kuchen, and in Belgium it still attaches to everything from the spiced couque de Dinant to the couque suisse. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, filed it among his breakfast cakes between wheat cakes and grissini — a reminder that the American hotel breakfast of the period leaned heavily on the French bakery. The recipe is really an exercise in dough management rather than invention: one basic brioche paste, portioned small, and served at the moment when hot bread and cold butter meet.