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Gateau, Chambord
Four ounces fine sugar, one teaspoon vanilla essence, two ounces sifted flour, five eggs, whites and yolks separate, and half a saltspoon salt. Place the egg yolks, vanilla, sugar and salt in a bowl and briskly mix for ten minutes with a wooden spoon. Beat up the whites to a stiff froth and add to the mixture; mix well with a skimmer for one minute, add the flour and sharply mix for one minute. Lightly butter a large dome-shaped pudding mould, drop in the preparation and set the mould in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, let cool off and unmould.
Place in a small saucepan two egg yolks, one ounce sugar, one tablespoon flour; dilute these ingredients with two gills cold milk, then add half teaspoon vanilla essence; set the pan on the fire and stir the preparation with a wooden spoon for five minutes. Remove the pan from the fire, add two ounces peeled and finely chopped almonds and stir until cold. Then add one ounce good butter and mix well. Slice the cake into quarter-inch slices, spread a teaspoon almond preparation on each slice and carefully place the slices in position so as to give the cake its original form. Arrange on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A lean sponge baked in a dome mould, then sliced horizontally, layered with an almond pastry cream and reassembled into its original shape. Nothing here is difficult, but the cake has no chemical leavening at all, so everything depends on how the eggs are handled.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningTen minutes of beating yolks with sugar is not padding — it is the ribbon stage, and a wooden spoon will take that long. Fold the stiff whites and the flour in with a light hand; the "sharply mix for one minute" means decisive folding, not stirring the air back out.
- Weights and odd measuresIngredients are by weight: 4 oz sugar is about 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons, 2 oz flour a scant 1/2 cup, 2 oz almonds about 1/2 cup chopped. A gill is half a cup, so two gills of milk is 1 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is a generous pinch.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature at all; a moderate oven, around 350°F, suits it. Twenty minutes suits a mould of about 1 to 1.5 quarts; a deeper dome will need longer. It is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Butter and flour the mould"Lightly butter" is optimistic for a fluted or hemispherical mould with no flour and no paper. Butter thoroughly, then dust with flour or fine sugar, and unmould while the cake is still barely warm.
- A skimmer means a flat perforated spoonNot a wire skimmer for stock. A large flat perforated spoon or a rubber spatula folds the whites in with the least loss of volume.
- Cook the almond cream properlyFive minutes of stirring is the minimum. The custard must come to a bubble and hold it briefly, or the tablespoon of flour will taste raw and the cream will thin out as it sits. Stir it cold with a film of butter or plastic on the surface to prevent a skin, then beat in the final ounce of butter.
- Slicing and rebuildingChill the sponge before cutting — quarter-inch horizontal slices through a dome are far easier cold. Lay the slices out in order as you cut, spread, and stack them back from the bottom up so the dome reassembles cleanly.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. The folded napkin is period presentation; a chilled hour before serving lets the cream set and makes the cake cut in neat wedges.
Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) belongs to the era when French grande cuisine supplied the vocabulary of American hotel kitchens, and dish names were borrowed freely from châteaux, generals and opera singers. "Chambord" points to the great Loire château, and in classical cookery it is attached most often to a whole braised fish — carp or salmon à la Chambord — dressed with an elaborate garnish; the name came to signify grandeur of presentation more than any fixed set of ingredients. What it signals here is the dome mould and the reconstruction of the sliced cake into its original shape, a piece of sleight of hand that lets a plain sponge arrive at the table looking whole. The cake itself is a separated-egg sponge, and the almond filling is a frangipane-style pastry cream.