No. 3301

Darioles with Vanilla

Darioles a la Vanille

Break three eggs in a vessel, beat and add one gill of vanilla sugar (No. 3165), as much flour, the same proportion of dried almonds and a grain of salt, diluting with three gills of good milk. Butter twelve timbale molds (No. 1, Fig. 137) and line them with puff paste parings (No. 146) and place a small piece of butter on the bottom of each, then fill with the above preparation. Lay them on a baking sheet and cook in a slack oven for half an hour; five minutes before taking out bestrew the tops with vanilla sugar and allow them to cool off before unmolding.

← No. 3300 Darioles with Orange Flower Water Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3302 D'Artois Cake with Apricot Marmalade or Almo →

For the Modern Kitchen

A custard batter baked in pastry-lined dariole molds. The measurements are by volume throughout, which makes the recipe easier to scale than it first looks.

A gill is half a cupOne gill equals 4 fl oz, so the batter is 1/2 cup vanilla sugar, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup ground almonds and 1 1/2 cups milk to three eggs. The recipe measures the flour and almonds by volume rather than weight, and asks only that they match the sugar ("as much flour, the same proportion of dried almonds").
"Slack oven" means 300–325F"Slack oven" -- Slack indicates a cool oven; roughly 300-325F is the usual modern equivalent, though period terms were loose and Ranhofer gives no temperatures. Half an hour at that sort of heat sets the custard gently; too hot and an egg custard is apt to puff and then weep.
Vanilla sugarNo. 3165 is Ranhofer's own preparation of sugar perfumed with vanilla bean and sifted (the method is given on that page, not here). A jar of caster sugar with two used beans buried in it for a week does much the same thing; commercial vanilla sugar or sugar pulsed with the scrapings of one bean is an acceptable stand-in.
"Dried almonds"Blanched almonds dried out and pounded fine — what a modern kitchen calls ground almonds or almond flour. They should be dry, not oily; almonds ground too long in a processor turn to paste and the batter will be heavy.
Timbale moldsDariole molds are small straight-sided cups of about 3 fl oz. Deep muffin tins or metal timbale cups work, though the classic shape is taller than wide. Butter them well; the pastry lining is thin and clings.
Puff paste paringsThe trimmings left from cutting out puff pastry, re-rolled (No. 146). Re-rolled parings rise less evenly than fresh paste, which matters little in a thin lining. Store-bought all-butter puff, rolled thin and pressed into the molds, is the practical equivalent.
The butter on the bottomThe recipe calls for a small piece of butter under the batter in each mold. It gives no reason; buttering the base of a lined mold is commonly done to help release and to protect the pastry.
UnmoldingThey must cool in the molds. Turned out hot, the custard has not set firm and the pastry shell will tear. Yield is twelve small cakes, one or two per person as an entremets.

A Little History

Darioles are among the oldest surviving names in French pastry, appearing in medieval and early modern cookery as small pastry cases filled with a sweetened, spiced custard; the word came to mean the mold as much as the cake, and a dariole mold is still standard equipment. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, gives them here among the small cakes served as an entremets he ssweet course between the roast and the dessert proper. Ranhofer gives two versions in succession, one flavored with orange flower water and this one with vanilla, printing both without preference. The instruction to line the molds with puff paste parings is characteristic of a professional kitchen, where nothing usable was thrown out.