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Souffle Au Maraschino
Place in a saucepan half ounce sifted flour and one gill cold milk; sharply whisk for five minutes, then add half ounce butter, two ounces powdered sugar and two tablespoons of Maraschino. Set the pan on a moderate fire and slowly boil for five minutes, constantly stirring meanwhile. Remove from the fire, break in five egg yolks, one by one, constantly stirring while doing so, then let get cold.
Beat up to a stiff froth the whites of the five eggs and add them to the preparation, carefully mixing for one minute. Lightly butter a souffle dish. Pour the preparation into it; dredge a tablespoon powdered sugar over all. Set in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove and immediately serve.
A classic hot dessert soufflé built on a very stiff flour-and-milk panade rather than a full pastry cream. The measurements are by weight and old volume, and the oven temperature is left to the cook.
- GillOne gill is half a cup (4 fl oz). With only half an ounce of flour, the base stays thin at first and thickens as it boils.
- Weights to volumeHalf an ounce of sifted flour is about 2 tablespoons; half an ounce of butter is 1 tablespoon; 2 ounces of powdered sugar is roughly half a cup, sifted.
- Moderate ovenOven heat -- the recipe gives no oven temperature; the 'moderate fire' it mentions applies to the saucepan. A moderate oven of this period is generally taken as somewhere around 350-375F, and twenty minutes at that heat suits a soufflé of this size: set at the edges, still creamy at the centre.
- MaraschinoThis means maraschino liqueur, a clear spirit distilled from marasca cherries and their stones, not the syrup from a jar of dyed cocktail cherries. Luxardo or a similar maraschino is a reasonable modern choice.
- Adding the yolksTake the pan fully off the heat and stir each yolk in briskly. Five yolks into a small quantity of hot base will scramble if the pan is still on the burner or the yolks go in together.
- Preparing the dishButter the dish and then dust it with sugar, turning out the excess. The original says butter only; sugar gives the batter something to climb and a thin crisp shell.
- Folding"Carefully mixing for one minute" means folding. Slacken the cold base with a spoonful of the whites first, then fold in the rest with a spatula until barely combined.
- Size and yieldA soufflé dish of roughly 1 to 1½ quarts, filled to about three-quarters. Serves four. Fill and bake at once -- a folded soufflé batter starts losing volume within minutes.
- Serving"Immediately serve" is not a flourish. The soufflé begins to sink as soon as it leaves the oven; carry it to the table straight from the rack.
Maraschino is distilled from marasca cherries, stones and all, and is traditionally associated with Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, where it was produced commercially from the eighteenth century and exported across Europe. Its almond-edged cherry flavour made it a standard flavouring in nineteenth-century confectionery and pastry work, turning up in soufflés, ices, jellies and the syrup used to soak sponge. This recipe belongs to the classical French repertoire of hot dessert soufflés, all variations on the same method: a small starch-thickened base enriched with yolks, lightened with beaten whites, flavoured with liqueur, coffee, chocolate or fruit purée. Worth noting that the bright red cocktail cherry took its name from this liqueur long after the fact; the two have little in common now.