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Gateau, Charles
Shell twelve walnuts, place them in a mortar with three ounces fine sugar and the juice of half an orange; pound to a fine pulp, then place in a tureen with four egg yolks; beat well with a whisk for five minutes. Beat up the whites of the three eggs to a stiff froth, add to the yolks and gently mix with a skimmer for a half minute; add two ounces of sifted flour and mix the whole together for one minute more. Lightly butter a small square pastry tin, line the bottom with a buttered piece white paper, pour in the preparation and set in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Remove, pour over a tablespoon maraschino and a tablespoon kirsch. Let cool off in the tin, unmould, tear off the paper and place it on a pastry grill with a tin underneath the cake. Place in a small saucepan two ounces glazed sugar, one egg white and a tablespoon strawberry syrup; mix well with a wooden spoon, place the pan on the fire and heat for one minute, stirring meanwhile. Remove, spread this preparation all over the surface of the cake, let cool off, dress the cake on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A walnut sponge soaked in liqueur and finished with a pink boiled icing. It is a competent recipe, but the original counts its eggs carelessly and uses several vessel names that have shifted meaning.
- The egg countIt calls for four yolks but only three whites. Either separate four eggs and use all four whites, or hold back one yolk; the batter has no other leavening, so the whites are doing all the lifting.
- Moderate oven350F. Twenty minutes is right for a thin sheet of batter in a small square tin; test at eighteen with a skewer, since an overbaked walnut sponge dries out quickly.
- Tin sizeNo dimensions are given beyond "small square pastry tin." This quantity of batter would suit something in the region of an 8-inch square, baked thin; a larger pan gives a thinner, faster-baking cake.
- Glazed sugarConfectioners' (icing) sugar, sifted. Two ounces with one egg white and a spoonful of syrup makes a thin pourable glaze rather than a stiff royal icing.
- The icing and raw egg whiteOne minute over the fire will not pasteurise the white. Use pasteurised liquid egg white or meringue powder if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- Pounding the walnutsA food processor replaces the mortar. Pulse the nuts with the sugar and orange juice only until you have a damp paste; run it too long and the walnut oil separates and weighs the batter down.
- Tureen and skimmerThe tureen is simply a large mixing bowl. The skimmer is a flat perforated spoon used here for folding, so a rubber spatula does the same job with less deflation.
- The liqueur soakMaraschino and kirsch are both cherry-based and both still sold. Pour them over while the cake is hot from the oven so they soak in rather than sit on the surface; the alcohol will not cook off at that point.
- YieldBaked as a thin square, it will serve roughly eight as a tea cake. The napkin-lined dish is a period serving convention, not a requirement.
Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, arranged The International Cook Book as an alphabetical dictionary, which is why a cake appears under G for gâteau with the qualifying name trailing after it like a surname. Dedicating a dish to a patron, a colleague or a public figure was standard practice in the French professional kitchen Filippini trained in, and the books of the period are full of such names with no surviving record of who was meant. The cake itself is a biscuit aux noix: ground nuts standing in for part of the flour, whipped whites for all of the lift, and a liqueur soak poured over the hot crumb. Maraschino and kirsch were both fashionable imports in American hotel kitchens around 1900, and the pink strawberry glaze is of a piece with the era's taste for a coloured finish on an otherwise plain sponge.