No. 3376

Lady's Bouchees with Strawberries or Raspberries

Bouchees de Dames a la Fraise ou a la Framboise

Make a little very firm lady finger preparation (No. 3377); lay it through a pocket on paper in small inch and a quarter rounds and bake them in a moderate oven. As soon as done and cold detach from the paper and hollow each one slightly; fill up this empty space with strawberry or raspberry marmalade (No. 3695) and fasten two together; cover with a light layer of the marmalade and glaze with raspberry fondant (No. 58).

← No. 3375 Javaneses Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3377 Lady Fingers →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so this one line of instruction actually depends on three other numbered recipes. Here is what the page assumes you already know.

The hinge: a stiff batter"Very firm" is the whole trick. Ladyfinger batter piped for these must hold a domed round without spreading, which means the whites are beaten to firm peaks and folded in briefly, with the flour added last and by hand. Over-folded batter relaxes into flat wafers that cannot be hollowed.
"Through a pocket"A pastry bag. Use a plain round tip roughly 1/2 inch and pipe straight down to make domes about 1 1/4 inches across, spaced generously; they expand.
Moderate ovenIn modern terms something in the region of 350F; the book gives no temperatures, only the word "moderate." Small piped sponge rounds need only 8 to 12 minutes and are done when pale gold and dry on top but still springy. They dry out and crack past that.
Baking on paperParchment now, and the sponges will lift cleanly once fully cold. Nineteenth-century bakers used plain paper and released stuck biscuits by brushing the underside of the sheet with water.
"Marmalade"Not citrus marmalade. In The Epicurean this is a thick reduced fruit preserve, closer to a stiff seedless jam or fruit paste. A commercial seedless raspberry or strawberry preserve reduced briefly to spreading consistency behaves the same way.
Raspberry fondantRecipe No. 58 is cooked sugar fondant, worked white and then let down with a little syrup and warmed to about body temperature so it flows and sets glossy. Too hot and it dulls; too cool and it sits in ridges. Colour and flavour it with raspberry.
Yield and servingEach finished bouchee takes two rounds, so a batch yields half as many cakes as piped shells. They are petits fours: one or two per person at the end of a meal, and best eaten soon after the fondant is set.

A Little History

Bouchees de dames means simply "ladies' mouthfuls," the diminutive scale being the point — a petit four is measured in bites, not slices. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, organised his petits fours the way a professional pastry department did: a handful of base preparations, here the ladyfinger batter of No. 3377, the fruit marmalade of No. 3695 and the fondant of No. 58, recombined into dozens of named small cakes. The same sponge piped in fingers rather than rounds is the biscuit that lines a charlotte; piped in domes, sandwiched with jam and glazed, it becomes a different item on the menu entirely. That economy explains the terse style of the entry — it was written for cooks who had the component recipes already standing in the shop, and the numbering system is the book's index and its production system at once.