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Gateau, Mrs. Harris
Press four ounces vanilla marrons through sieve into a bowl, add two ounces sugar and two tablespoons good Jamaica rum, sharply stir with wooden spoon for five minutes, add one by one three egg yolks, sharply whisk while adding, then add an ounce flour and gently mix with a skimmer. Beat up four egg whites to a stiff froth, add to preparation with an ounce each flour and good mellow butter and gently but thoroughly mix. Line bottom of buttered pan with a sheet of buttered paper, drop preparation on this pan, nicely smooth surface and set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, lay on table for ten minutes, turn on a grated iron and lift up paper. Pour a vanilla glace over cakes, decorate all around the surface with candied half cherries, let cool off, dress on dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A chestnut sponge leavened entirely by egg white, with about two ounces of flour in the whole cake. The original gives no oven temperature, pan size or yield.
- MarronsVanilla marrons are candied chestnuts — marrons glacés, or the sweetened vanilla chestnut purée sold in tins and tubes. If using whole candied chestnuts, force them through a sieve as directed; if using purée, it is already smooth and you only need to slacken it with the rum.
- Flour, twiceThe flour is added in two stages, an ounce each time, for about 2 oz (a scant 1/2 cup) total. That is all the structure the cake has, so the second addition goes in with the whites and butter and must be folded, not stirred.
- The hinge: the whitesThere is no baking powder. Beat the four whites to a stiff froth and fold them in gently with the flour and the butter, which the recipe calls 'mellow' — soft, not melted; overworking here gives a dense, damp chestnut brick rather than a sponge.
- SkimmerThe recipe folds with a skimmer, a broad perforated tool. A large rubber spatula does the same job with less deflation.
- OvenUnstated. A cake of this type suits a moderate oven, in the region of 350F. The recipe gives no pan size, so the twenty-five minutes it specifies will only hold for a shallow round pan; a smaller, deeper one will need longer.
- Grated ironA wire cake rack. Turning the cake out after ten minutes' rest and peeling the paper while still warm keeps the paper from tearing the crumb.
- Vanilla glaceHere a vanilla glaze — confectioners' sugar thinned with water or a little cream and vanilla, or a poured fondant. Not ice cream.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; one cake. The folded napkin on the serving dish is period presentation.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it is full of dishes carrying the names of patrons and acquaintances. The cake itself belongs to the wider family of French chestnut confections built on marrons glacés, candied chestnuts traditionally associated with the chestnut country of the Ardèche and with confectioners in Lyon and Piedmont, which by the late nineteenth century reached American kitchens as an imported luxury in tins and glass jars. Chestnut purée behaves in baking much as ground nuts do: it brings starch and sugar of its own, which is part of why two ounces of flour and four egg whites carry the whole cake. The rum, the candied cherries and the poured white glaze are the standard finishing vocabulary of period hotel pastry work.