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Brioches, Vanilla
Place four egg yolks in a bowl with two ounces fine sugar and briskly whisk with a wire whisk six minutes, then add the whites of the four eggs beaten to a stiff froth, one and a half ounces flour and a teaspoon vanilla essence. Place mixture in a pastry bag, with a quarter-inch tube at bottom and carefully press the preparation into a lightly buttered and floured pastry pan in twelve even round forms. Set pan in a brisk oven for twelve minutes, remove and let cool off. Detach cakes from pan, lay them upside down on a table, then with the blade of a knife spread a little strawberry jelly over each flat side and fasten two by two. Neatly trim to even size and arrange on a small iron grating with a pan underneath. Spread a glace vanilla over them, place half a candied cherry on top of each and serve.
Despite the name, this is not yeast-raised brioche dough but a piped sponge batter — essentially ladyfinger batter shaped into rounds, sandwiched with jelly and glazed. The whole thing hangs on how gently you handle the beaten whites.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe yolk-and-sugar base must be whisked to the ribbon stage (pale, thick, falling in a wide band) before the whites and flour go in. Fold the whites and the sifted flour in together with a spatula in as few strokes as possible; stirring collapses the foam and the piped rounds spread flat instead of doming.
- WeightsTwo ounces fine sugar is about 57 g, roughly a scant third of a cup of caster sugar. One and a half ounces flour is about 43 g, a generous third of a cup — a very lean batter by modern standards, which is why the egg foam has to survive.
- "Fine sugar" and "vanilla essence"Fine sugar means caster or superfine sugar, which dissolves during the six-minute whisking. Vanilla essence here is simply vanilla extract; a teaspoon is right.
- "A brisk oven"Brisk is usually reckoned at about 400-425F. For small piped sponges, set the oven at 400-425F and expect them done in 10-12 minutes, when the tops are pale gold and spring back. They go from set to dry very quickly at this heat.
- Piping and the panA quarter-inch tube gives thin ribbons; to get twelve round forms you pipe coils or mounds about an inch and a half across. Butter-and-flour on bare metal was standard then, but parchment is more reliable for a batter this fragile.
- Strawberry jellyPeriod jelly meant a strained, seedless, firmly set preserve. Use seedless strawberry jam, warmed slightly and cooled to spreading consistency, so it does not tear the soft cut faces.
- "Glace vanilla" and the gratingThe glaze is a thin vanilla water icing — confectioners' sugar, a little water or cream, vanilla — poured over so the excess runs off. The "small iron grating with a pan underneath" is a wire rack set over a sheet pan.
- YieldTwelve piped rounds joined in pairs give six finished cakes, each topped with half a candied cherry. Serve the same day; a sponge this lean stales fast once glazed.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, written out of the long-lived New York restaurant tradition in which French pastry vocabulary was applied loosely and confidently. Nothing about the formula is brioche: it is the standard biscuit batter — whipped yolks, whipped whites, a token amount of flour — that also produces ladyfingers and the shells of many nineteenth-century petits fours, here piped into rounds, sandwiched with jelly and iced. The name appears to attach to the shape and size of the finished cake rather than to its dough. Whatever the era's equipment, this particular formula uses no chemical leavening: the entire lift depends on the hand whisking and a hot oven that sets the foam before it can fall.