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Madelein Au Chocolat
Break four eggs in a copper basin, add four ounces sugar, one ounce grated chocolate and a half teaspoon vanilla essence. Sharply beat up with a whisk for fifteen minutes, add four ounces sifted flour, gently stir with a skimmer for one minute, add three ounces melted butter, a saltspoon baking powder and lightly mix. Line the bottom of a pastry tin with a sheet of buttered paper, drop in the preparation and set in a moderate oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, turn on a grating, lift up the paper, evenly spread a glace au chocolate over, let cool off, cut into six even pieces and serve.
This is a small chocolate genoise baked as a sheet and glazed — despite the name, nothing to do with the shell-shaped madeleines of Commercy. The whole thing stands or falls on how much air you beat into the whole eggs.
- The hinge: the egg foamFifteen minutes of hand whisking with a balloon whisk over no heat is what leavens this cake; the pinch of baking powder is insurance, not lift. In a stand mixer, whip the eggs, sugar, chocolate and vanilla on high for 8 to 10 minutes, until the mixture triples and a drizzle from the whisk sits on the surface for several seconds.
- Weights, not cupsFilippini's ounces are weights: 4 oz sugar is about 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon, 4 oz flour a scant cup, 3 oz butter 6 tablespoons. A saltspoon is usually reckoned at 1/4 teaspoon.
- Copper basinAn unlined copper bowl was standard in professional kitchens for egg work; it matters for whipping whites, far less for whole eggs. Any wide bowl will do here.
- Grated chocolatePeriod "chocolate" sold by the ounce was unsweetened or barely sweetened block chocolate. Grate it on the fine side of a box grater so it disperses in the foam rather than sinking as flakes; unsweetened baking chocolate is the closest match.
- Folding, and the butterThe "skimmer" is simply a flat perforated tool for folding — a rubber spatula does the same job. Stir a spoonful of the batter into the melted butter first, then fold that back in; poured straight on, warm butter collapses a good deal of the foam.
- Pan and paperA "pastry tin" here is a shallow baking pan; the recipe does not specify its size or shape. Buttered parchment replaces the buttered paper, and a "grating" is a wire cooling rack.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually reckoned at around 350F. Twenty minutes suits a shallow layer; the recipe gives no pan size, so start checking at 16, and pull it when the centre springs back, since a dry genoise is unrecoverable.
- Glace au chocolatThe book means a poured chocolate icing — confectioners' sugar, cocoa or melted chocolate and enough hot water or syrup to make it spreadable. Apply while the cake is barely warm so it flows, then let it set before cutting.
- YieldSix pieces, as written — a small cake meant for a family table or a single course, not a party.
The International Cook Book is Alexander Filippini's compendium, drawn from his years in the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, and the vocabulary here gives the game away: copper basin, skimmer, grating, a preparation "dropped" into a lined tin. These are the instructions of a man dictating to cooks who already knew the motions, which is why nothing is said about how full the pan should be or what the batter should look like. The cake itself is a genoise — whole eggs beaten warm or cold with sugar until they hold air, then flour and butter folded in — a technique generally traced to Genoese pastry cooks working in France, and one widely used in European cake work by 1900. The name "madeleine" seems not to have been reserved strictly for the ribbed shell cakes now famous from Proust; here it marks a small, plain, butter-rich sponge finished with a glaze rather than any particular shape.