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Gateau, Mocha
Place in a copper basin three ounces granulated sugar, four egg yolks, six drops vanilla essence, one tablespoon very strongly made coffee, and sharply beat with a wooden spoon for five minutes. Beat up whites of the four eggs to a stiff froth, add to yolks with two ounces well-sifted flour and gently mix. Line bottom of a small six-inch-square pastry tin with a sheet of buttered paper, drop in preparation, neatly smooth surface, then set in oven for twenty minutes. Remove, let rest for ten minutes, turn on a table, take up paper, split in two, spread half the quantity creme mocha on split sides, place together as before, then decorate top with balance of creme mocha, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over, dress on dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A small coffee sponge in the classic biscuit style, split and filled with the book's creme mocha. The recipe assumes you already have that cream made, and it never names an oven temperature.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Bake at 350F (moderate); twenty minutes is right for a shallow six-inch square. The cake is done when the top springs back and the edges pull from the paper.
- Weights to volumesThree ounces of granulated sugar is about 6 tablespoons; two ounces of flour is a scant 1/2 cup. Weighing is better here, since the whole structure depends on flour being light relative to egg.
- The copper basinThe recipe uses the copper basin for the yolk mixture, not the whites; copper was standard general-purpose kitchen equipment. Any stainless or glass bowl will do for the yolks. Copper is traditionally associated with stable egg-white foam, so beat the whites in copper or add a pinch of cream of tartar for insurance.
- The hinge: folding"Gently mix" is the whole recipe. Sift the flour over the lightened yolks and folded-in whites and cut it through with a spatula in as few strokes as possible; the batter is leavened only by air, so overmixing gives a flat, rubbery slab.
- Very strongly made coffeeOne tablespoon has to carry all the flavour, so make it as strong as espresso or dissolve a teaspoon of instant coffee in a tablespoon of hot water and cool it before adding.
- Vanilla essenceSix drops is a very small amount, on the order of 1/8 teaspoon or less of modern vanilla extract.
- Lining the tinButtered paper means parchment now. Butter the sides of the tin as well; this batter climbs and then sticks.
- Splitting and fillingThe baked cake is only about an inch tall, so let it cool completely before splitting with a long serrated knife, not after the ten-minute rest the recipe allows. Warm sponge tears and warm buttercream slides.
- YieldA six-inch square serves four to six in small slices. Because the filling is butter-based, serve at cool room temperature rather than straight from the refrigerator.
Gateau mocha is a French pastry-shop formula: a plain egg-foam sponge, split, sandwiched and masked with coffee butter cream. "Mocha" is a place name, the Yemeni Red Sea port of al-Mukha, which for centuries was the shipping point for the coffee trade and whose name became shorthand in Europe for good coffee and, eventually, for anything coffee-flavoured. The batter here is the biscuit method rather than a genoise: yolks and sugar beaten cold, whites whipped separately, flour folded last, with no chemical leavening at all, which is why the instructions dwell on beating for a full five minutes and then mixing gently. The direction to dress the finished cake on a folded napkin is a stock direction in period cookery writing generally.