No. 3377

Lady Fingers

Biscuits a la Cuiller

Separate the whites from twenty eggs and pour them into a basin; leave the yolks in another vessel; to these yolks add a pound of powdered sugar, part of it being flavored with vanilla (No. 3165) and beat up to make a very light preparation; then put in one pound of sifted flour and the twenty whites beaten to a stiff froth, stirring the whole lightly together. Pour a part of this preparation into a pocket (Fig. 179) furnished with a half-inch diameter socket and through it push biscuits four and a half inches in length, keeping them slightly apart and laying them on sheets of paper; bestrew with powdered sugar; put on a baking sheet and leave stand a moment until the sugar begins to dissolve, then push it into a moderate oven. As soon as they are of a light golden color and the crust begins to harden remove at once from the oven and from the baking sheet, then range them on a table till cold.

Another Recipe is one pound of sugar, twelve eggs, half a pound of flour, a grain of salt, grated zest or a spoonful of orange flower water.

← No. 3376 Lady's Bouchees with Strawberries or Raspber Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3378 Lemon Crowns →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's ladyfingers are a hotel-scale batch — twenty eggs to a pound each of sugar and flour. The method is sound and unchanged; almost everything needing translation is quantity, equipment and oven language.

Scale it downTwenty eggs with a pound each of sugar and flour makes a very large batch — easily a hundred or more fingers. Quartering the recipe (5 eggs, 4 oz sugar, 4 oz flour) fits a home mixer and two baking sheets.
Egg sizeNineteenth-century eggs generally ran smaller than today's large. If you scale by count, expect a slightly looser batter; go by weight where you can.
"Powdered sugar"In Ranhofer this means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match in the batter. For the dusting, modern confectioners' sugar works, and many modern recipes call for it.
The vanillaNo. 3165 appears to be a vanilla sugar — sugar stored with split vanilla beans until scented. Substitute a teaspoon of vanilla extract per pound of sugar, added with the yolks.
"A pocket furnished with a half-inch socket"A piping bag with a plain round tip, about 12 mm. Sheets of paper means parchment; if you use unlined pans, grease and flour them.
OvenA moderate oven is roughly 325–350°F. Ladyfingers of this size take about 8 to 12 minutes — pull them the moment the tops are pale gold and the crust is set, as the recipe insists, or they dry out.
The double dusting mattersThe dusting matters -- Sugaring the piped fingers and letting them stand until the sugar begins to dissolve is what produces the fine pearled crust. The recipe calls for a single dusting; some pastry cooks sugar twice, tipping off the excess between.
FoldingThe hinge of the recipe is "stirring the whole lightly together." The flour and the beaten whites go in together and by hand; overworking deflates the whites and the fingers spread instead of standing.
Getting them off the paperLift the parchment onto a cold surface as directed. If they stick, brush the underside of the paper lightly with water and wait a minute, then peel.
The alternate formulaThe second version — a pound of sugar, twelve eggs, half a pound of flour — has proportionally less flour and more sugar per egg, so a richer, softer finger.

A Little History

Biscuits à la cuiller — "spoon biscuits" — are traditionally said to take their French name from the batter being shaped in lengths with a spoon, before piping bags were general. Charles Ranhofer set this recipe down in The Epicurean (1894); he was chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the twenty-egg quantity is a restaurant's, not a household's: ladyfingers were consumed in volume as the lining for charlottes and Bavarian creams, as the base for trifles, and plain alongside ices, wine and after-dinner coffee. The piping bag he calls a "pocket" and illustrates at Fig. 179. The Savoy biscuit is often named as an ancestor of the European dry sponge finger, though the story tying it to the medieval court of Savoy is tradition rather than documented fact.