No. 3304

Eclairs, Vanilla Chantilly

Eclairs Chantilly a la Vanille

Boil two gills of water in a saucepan with a grain of salt, a teaspoonful of sugar and four ounces of butter; as soon as the butter rises remove the pan from the fire and incorporate into it five ounces of flour; beat the paste with a spoon until smooth, then stir it once more over a moderate fire until it detaches from the saucepan; this is called drying; take it off and let get partly cold. Then mix into it four or five egg-yolks, one after the other, continuing to stir vigorously, and lastly add two ounces more butter. Pour the paste into a pocket (Fig. 179), having a three eighths of an inch socket, and push it on a baking sheet in regular rows of eclairs, each one three inches long and a short distance apart; egg over and cook until they become perfectly dry. After removing from the oven detach from the sheet with the blade of a thin knife. When the eclairs are cold split them through the bottom, open and fill with sweet whipped cream flavored well with vanilla (No. 50); cover the tops of the cakes with a little light apricot marmalade (No. 3675) with vanilla icing (No. 102). As soon as the cakes are iced range them on a pastry grate, and place at the entrance of the oven for a few minutes to glaze.

← No. 3303 Eclairs, Coffee and Chocolate Cream Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3305 Francillon Cakes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Standard choux paste, piped and filled, with two details that trip up modern cooks: the recipe gives no oven temperature at all, and it enriches with yolks rather than whole eggs.

MeasuresTwo gills of water is one cup (8 fl oz). Four ounces of butter is one stick; five ounces of flour is about a scant cup and a quarter, and should be weighed rather than scooped.
Oven heatRanhofer assumes you know it. Choux needs a hot start to inflate — 425F for the first 15 minutes — then a drop to 350F for another 20 to 25 minutes to dry out. "Cook until they become perfectly dry" is the operative instruction: a pale, underbaked eclair collapses as it cools.
Yolks, not whole eggsFour or five yolks plus the extra two ounces of butter give a richer, shorter paste than the whole-egg version most modern recipes use. The paste should fall from the spoon in a thick ribbon; if it stays stiff enough to hold a peak, work in one more yolk or a whole egg.
Do not skip the dryingStirring the paste over moderate heat until it pulls away from the pan cooks out water and gelatinizes the starch. This is what lets the paste absorb the eggs and rise. Give it two to three minutes, until a film forms on the pan bottom.
The pocketA piping bag with a plain 3/8-inch tip. Pipe 3-inch lengths two inches apart; they spread. "Egg over" means a thin wash of beaten egg brushed along the top, which also smooths the ridges left by the tip.
Splitting and fillingSlitting the underside rather than the top keeps the glazed surface intact. Fill only once completely cold, and shortly before serving — whipped cream softens the shells within a couple of hours.
The two-layer topA thin brush of warmed, sieved apricot preserve seals the shell so the fondant icing sits glossy instead of soaking in. The brief return to the oven mouth is to set and shine the fondant, not to bake it; a warm spot near a turned-off oven does the same.
YieldAbout 20 to 24 eclairs of the stated size.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his professional system written down — hence the cross-references to numbered recipes for vanilla-flavored cream, apricot marmalade and fondant icing. The eclair itself is a nineteenth-century French pastry-shop item, the name generally translated as "lightning" and often said to refer to how quickly it is eaten; it appears in French printed sources from the middle decades of the century, built from the same choux paste that had long been used for profiteroles and gougeres. Chantilly cream — sweetened whipped cream — takes its name from the Chateau de Chantilly and is traditionally, though not documentably, linked to its maitre d'hotel Vatel. Ranhofer's version, iced with fondant over an apricot glaze and finished at the oven's mouth for shine, is the pastry as an American luxury restaurant presented it: a small cake for the entremets course, made in rows and served in numbers.