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Gateau Breton
Scald for two minutes and peel two ounces of almonds, place in mortar and pound to a paste, remove, place in a vessel with four ounces sugar, four egg yolks, half teaspoon vanilla essence, and whisk for five minutes. Beat the whites of the four eggs to a stiff froth, add to the vessel with two ounces sifted flour, and mix well with a skimmer for two minutes Lightly butter a straight-edged pie plate, drop in the preparation, neatly smooth the surface, then set in oven for twenty minutes. Remove, let rest for ten minutes, turn it upon a table, spread over evenly two tablespoons strawberry jam, pour over a glace vanilla, let rest for five minutes, dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A small almond sponge finished with jam and a poured vanilla icing. The method is sound but the original assumes a professional kitchen: no oven temperature, no pan size, and a glaze it never explains.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A thin almond sponge of this kind bakes at 350F; twenty minutes is right for an 8- to 9-inch layer roughly an inch deep. It is done when the centre springs back and the edge has just begun to pull from the pan.
- The almondsTwo ounces of blanched almonds pounded in a mortar becomes a fine, slightly oily paste. A food processor does it in under a minute, but pulse rather than run it, and add a spoonful of the weighed sugar to stop it turning into butter.
- "Straight-edged pie plate"Not a sloping American pie dish but a straight-sided tin about 8 to 9 inches across, so the cake turns out with square edges to ice. A cake tin or springform of that size does the job; butter it and line the base, since there is no added butter in the batter to help release.
- Skimmer as a folding toolThe recipe folds the whites in with a skimmer, the perforated implement that would have been to hand in a kitchen of this kind. A large silicone spatula is the modern equivalent. Two minutes is the outside limit; fold only until no white streaks remain.
- Whisking the yolksFive minutes with sugar and almond paste means the ribbon stage: pale, thickened, and holding a trail on the surface for a couple of seconds. This is the cake's only other leavening besides the whites, so do not shorten it.
- "Glace vanilla"A pouring water icing, not ice cream. Roughly a cup of sifted confectioners' sugar slackened with a tablespoon or so of hot water and a little vanilla, thin enough to flow but thick enough to set opaque. It is poured over the jam while the cake is still slightly warm so it settles smooth.
- The jam layerTwo tablespoons of strawberry jam spread over the top of a turned-out cake, not a filling between layers. Warming and sieving it first gives a thinner, even coat that the icing will not tear up.
- Yield and servingOne 8- to 9-inch cake, six to eight small portions. The folded napkin on the serving dish is period presentation; a cake stand does the job today.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era of the grand hotel and restaurant kitchen, and this entry shows it: measurements in ounces, a mortar, a skimmer, and a dish sent out on a folded napkin. The name is worth a note, because a genuine gâteau breton from Brittany is a dense, deep-gold cake of flour, sugar, egg yolks and a great deal of salted butter, scored in a lattice on top and closer to shortbread than to sponge. What appears here is a whisked almond sponge with jam and water icing, a standard piece of professional French pastry repertoire that has been given a regional label. The almonds are the honest French element: pounded almond paste as the flavour base of a light cake is a technique that runs straight back through the nineteenth-century pastry tradition, and ground almonds survive today in the financier.