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Langues De Chats
Place in a basin four ounces sugar with two eggs, stir with a wooden spoon for five minutes, then add two more eggs; briskly stir for five minutes more. Then add six ounces sifted flour with four tablespoons melted butter; mix for one minute. Slide a quarter-inch tube at the bottom of a pastry bag, drop in the preparation; lightly butter and flour a pastry tin, then press down the preparation into finger forms. Set in the oven and bake for ten minutes. Remove, and serve when cold.
A plain batter of sugar, eggs, flour and butter piped into fingers — the classic French petit four sec. Two things the original leaves out are the oven temperature and how far apart to pipe, and both decide whether the biscuits come out crisp or fused into a sheet.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. These want a hot oven, in the region of 400F, and are done when the outer rim has browned and the centre is still pale. Start checking well before the ten minutes the recipe allows, as thin piped fingers can colour faster than that.
- WeightsFour ounces sugar is about 115 g (a scant 2/3 cup); six ounces flour is about 170 g (roughly 1 1/3 cups, spooned and levelled). Four tablespoons melted butter is 2 oz / 57 g — less butter, proportionally, than many modern langues de chats recipes, which should make this version drier and more biscuit-like.
- "Pastry tin"Most likely a flat baking sheet rather than a mould. Butter and flour it as directed, or use parchment.
- SpacingPipe fingers about 2 to 2 1/2 inches long and leave a full 2 inches between them in all directions, as the batter spreads as it bakes.
- MixingThe two five-minute beating stages are not padding — they are what aerates the eggs and sugar. Once the flour and butter go in, the instruction to mix for one minute is a limit, not a minimum; overworking at that point toughens the biscuits.
- Cooling and storingLift them off the sheet while still warm and pliable, then cool flat on a rack. They go soft within hours in a humid kitchen, so keep them in an airtight tin and eat within a day or two.
- YieldAround 40 to 50 biscuits at 2 inches, depending on how heavy a hand you have on the bag.
Langues de chats — cats' tongues — takes its name from the shape, a narrow flattened finger with rounded ends, and the biscuits are served as an accompaniment rather than a dish in their own right: alongside ice cream, sorbet, fruit compotes, custards or a glass of dessert wine, where their job is to supply crispness against something soft. They belong to the family of petits fours secs, the dry small cakes a professional kitchen keeps on hand because they need no assembly and hold for a day or two. The recipe assumes a pastry bag and plain tube as standard equipment and gives no oven temperature, which was common in books written by chefs for readers presumed to know their own range.