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Samaritain Cakes
Crack four fresh eggs in a copper basin, add four ounces sugar and half teaspoon vanilla essence. Set basin on range and briskly beat ten minutes. Remove to a table, then add four ounces sifted flour, gently mix with skimmer, add three ounces melted butter, then mix a little more with the skimmer. Drop in a lightly buttered pastry tin, set to bake in oven fifteen minutes. Remove, let rest ten minutes. Turn the cake on a table, cut in twelve round pieces two inches in diameter. Then with inch pastry cutter cut out centre of six of them only. Press six preserved apricots through a sieve into a bowl, adding one gill whipped cream and one teaspoon rum, mix well, arrange the six rings on top of the six uncut cakes, then fill the centres with the cream and place a candied cherry on top of each. Pour into a cold dish a tablespoon Swiss kirsch, a tablespoon maraschino and one tablespoon rum, lightly mix, place cakes over the liquor, sprinkle over a little powdered sugar and serve.
This is a genoise batter dressed up as six small filled cakes, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen. The batter is the whole of it: the eggs must be warmed and whipped to a thick, pale ribbon before any flour goes in, because there is no chemical leavening anywhere in the recipe.
- The hinge: warm eggs, no scrambled edgesSetting the basin on the range means gentle heat, to about 110-120F, which lets the eggs and sugar whip to several times their volume. Use a bowl over barely simmering water rather than direct heat, and beat continuously; if the mixture stops moving it will set on the metal and the sponge is finished.
- Copper basinAn unlined copper bowl was traditional for egg foams; for a whole-egg batter warmed on the range its practical advantage is even heat conduction. Stainless or glass over a water bath works. What matters is a wide, round-bottomed vessel a whisk can reach into.
- SkimmerA flat perforated skimmer, used here as a folding tool. A large rubber spatula does the same job. Fold the flour in with as few strokes as will incorporate it, then the melted butter, which should be warm but not hot.
- Weights, not cupsFour ounces sugar is about 1/2 cup plus a tablespoon; four ounces flour is a scant cup; three ounces butter is 6 tablespoons. A gill of cream is 1/2 cup, whipped.
- Oven and tinNo temperature is given; a moderate oven, in the region of 350F, suits a genoise. The "pastry tin" is presumably a shallow sheet or jelly-roll pan; the batter needs to be spread shallow enough for fifteen minutes to be right, yet deep enough that the rounds will hold a filling.
- Cutting the roundsLet the sheet cool fully before cutting, not the ten minutes stated, or the crumb tears under the cutter. Two-inch and one-inch plain cutters, dipped in flour, give clean edges.
- Preserved apricotsApricots in syrup, drained and sieved, give a small quantity of thick puree, enough to fill six one-inch centres. The recipe assumes fruit already soft and sweet enough to push through a sieve, which is why preserved rather than fresh or dried is called for.
- The liquor in the dishThree tablespoons of spirits spread across a cold platter perfumes the bases and lightly soaks them from below. It is not a soaking syrup, so the cakes stay dry on top for the powdered sugar. Serve within the hour.
- YieldSix cakes, one per person, from a full sheet of sponge, leaving the six cut-out centres and the trimmings over.
"Samaritain" belongs to the long list of French pastry names drawn from saints, sermons and places rather than from ingredients, and the naming is usually explained after the fact rather than documented; the same repertoire gives us religieuse, jesuite and puits d'amour. What is clear is the construction, which reads as hotel pastry work: one sheet of genoise, cut into discs, stacked with a ring, filled with fruit puree lightened with cream, crowned with a candied cherry and set over a pool of mixed liqueurs. Kirsch from Switzerland, maraschino from Dalmatia and rum together in one dish point to a well-stocked hotel cellar.