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Petites Bouchees De Dames
Place four egg yolks in a bowl with two ounces fine sugar and briskly whisk up with a whisk for six minutes, then add the whites of the four eggs beaten up to a stiff froth and one and a half ounces flour, with half teaspoon vanilla essence. Place the mixture in a pastry bag in which a tube quarter of an inch in diameter has previously been adjusted at the bottom. Then carefully press the preparation down on a slightly buttered and floured pastry pan to round form one inch in diameter, which ought to turn out about twenty-four. Set the pan in a brisk oven to bake for ten minutes, or till a nice colour. Remove the pan and let cool off.
Detach the cakes from the pan, lay them upside down on a table; then with a knife spread a little raspberry jelly over the top of each cake and fasten two by two. Arrange the twelve bouchees on a small iron grating with a pan underneath. Have in a bowl two ounces glazed sugar and the white of one egg; briskly stir with a wooden spoon for five minutes; add a teaspoon rum, mix well, then gently spread this preparation over the bouchees. Let dry and serve on a dish with folded napkin.
A plain sponge batter piped into small rounds, sandwiched with jelly and finished with a rum glaze. The batter is the hinge: it is a whisked foam with no chemical leavening, so it deflates quickly and must be piped and baked without delay.
- Weights in cupsTwo ounces of fine (caster) sugar is about 57 g, a scant third of a cup; one and a half ounces of flour is about 43 g, roughly a third of a cup. Two ounces of "glazed" sugar for the icing is about 57 g, near half a cup sifted.
- "Fine" and "glazed" sugarFine sugar means caster sugar, which dissolves into the yolks in the six minutes of whisking. Glazed sugar is confectioners' or icing sugar; sift it before beating or the glaze will be gritty.
- Folding, not stirringThe flour and the beaten whites go in by folding with a spatula. Whisking at this stage knocks out the air that is the only leavening in the batter.
- A brisk ovenBrisk is usually reckoned around 400-425F (200-220C). These one-inch rounds colour fast, so check at six or seven minutes and pull them when the edges are pale gold and the tops spring back.
- The panA slightly buttered and floured sheet works, but the cakes stick readily; parchment is easier and lets you lift them off intact while barely warm. If you use butter and flour, detach them while the sheet is still warm, not cold.
- Raspberry jellyJelly here means a clear seedless preserve, not a soft jam. Warm it slightly and use a thin film only; too much and the halves slide apart under the glaze.
- The rum glaze and raw whiteAn uncooked egg-white icing beaten by hand: one egg white to about half a cup of icing sugar, then a teaspoon of rum. At this ratio it is thinner than a standard royal icing. It is not cooked, so use pasteurised egg white or meringue powder if serving children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- Drying on the gratingThe rack over a pan lets the glaze run off the sides and set evenly. Allow an hour at room temperature; the surface should be dry to the touch before the bouchees are stacked or boxed.
- YieldTwenty-four piped rounds make twelve finished cakes, as the recipe itself states. They are best eaten soon after they are made.
Bouchée means simply a mouthful, and petites bouchées de dames is the sort of drawing-room name attached to any small, sweet, one-bite confection meant to be eaten without a fork. The batter is the standard whisked sponge that also produces ladyfingers and biscuits à la cuiller: yolks and sugar beaten to a ribbon, whites folded in, a little flour, nothing else to raise it. Piping it through a plain quarter-inch tube rather than spooning it out is what makes the rounds uniform. Filippini's International Cook Book gathers a great many such small European sweets alongside American dishes, and glazed, jam-joined mouthfuls of this kind belonged to the tea table.