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Gateau De Plomb
Sift a half pound flour on a table with a fountain in the centre, place in it a saltspoon salt, three ounces sugar, quarter pound butter, two egg yolks and one gill fresh milk; knead the whole well together until of a soft dough. Transfer into a lightly buttered pie plate and set to bake in a moderate oven for thirty minutes. Remove, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A plain butter-and-egg dough baked flat in a pie plate — closer to a thick shortbread galette than to a layer cake. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the fontaine method, and give no yield.
- The hinge: do not overwork itThere is no leavening here, so all the tenderness comes from fat coating flour. The recipe says to knead well until the dough is soft; take that as far as an even, smooth dough and no further, since extended kneading develops gluten and turns a dense cake into a tough one.
- "A fountain in the centre"The flour is mounded on the work surface with a well hollowed out in the middle, and the wet ingredients go into the well. Work them together with the fingertips of one hand, drawing in flour from the walls.
- Weights in modern termsHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups (225 g); a quarter pound of butter is one stick (115 g); three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup (85 g).
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. This book is American, so read it as the US gill rather than the slightly larger British one.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read today as around 350°F, though the book gives no figure. Check the centre with a skewer rather than trusting the clock, since pie plates vary in depth.
- Pie plateThe recipe does not specify a size. The dough goes into the plate and is spread to an even thickness, not rolled and fitted like a crust.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives none; a standard pie plate would cut into six to eight wedges. It is best barely warm, dusted with powdered sugar as directed.
Gâteau de plomb means "lead cake," a frank description of an unleavened dough that bakes heavy and close-grained. Its construction is straight out of the professional pastry kitchen: the fontaine of flour, the enrichment with yolks and butter, and the shaping by hand are the same motions used for pâte sucrée, which is why the recipe assumes so much and explains so little. Its presence in The International Cook Book — compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York — reflects the book's habit of gathering modest household sweets from across Europe alongside restaurant showpieces, on the assumption that a reader who could manage a galantine needed only a sentence or two for a plain butter cake.