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Strawberry Pudding Souffle
Pick off the hulls and thoroughly wash and drain a pint fresh strawberries; place in a basin with half a gill cream and three ounces granulated sugar, then mash them up with a wooden spoon to a puree; add two ounces cake or bread crumbs, the yolks of three eggs, two ounces rice flour, half an ounce butter and a tablespoon good rum. Mix well until thoroughly amalgamated. Beat up the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth and gradually add to the mixture, gently stirring meanwhile. Lightly butter and sugar a quart pudding mould, drop the preparation into it, place on a tin, and set in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove, unmould on a hot dish, pour over a fresh strawberry sauce and serve.
A baked pudding souffle rather than a true souffle: the crumbs and rice flour give it enough body to be turned out of its mould, which a soufflé proper could never survive. A few of the measures need translating.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so this is 2 fl oz — a quarter cup. The recipe specifies only 'cream'; a heavier cream carries the fruit without thinning the batter.
- Ounces are weight, not volumeThree ounces of granulated sugar is a scant half cup, two ounces of crumbs about a cup loosely packed, two ounces of rice flour a generous third of a cup. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon, softened rather than melted.
- Rice flourPlain white rice flour, not glutinous or sweet rice flour, which behaves quite differently. It absorbs the strawberry juice and keeps the pudding from weeping; cornstarch is not an even swap.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature, saying only to set it in the oven. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a quart mould for the twenty minutes specified; test with a skewer at the centre, which should come out clean but moist.
- The tin underneath"Place on a tin" means a baking sheet, not a water bath. It catches any overflow and shields the base, which is otherwise the first part to scorch.
- Folding the whitesThe whites go in last and the mixture is already heavy with fruit puree and crumbs. Fold in a third first to slacken the batter, then the rest in two additions; overworking here is the difference between a light pudding and a dense one.
- Buttering and sugaring the mouldThe sugar coating is what lets it release cleanly and gives the outside a thin candied crust. Butter thoroughly, add sugar, roll to coat, tip out the excess.
- UnmouldingLet it settle two or three minutes out of the oven before turning out, or the hot centre will slump. It will sink somewhat regardless — that is normal for this style of pudding.
- Strawberry sauce and yieldThe sauce is simply crushed fresh berries with sugar, warmed briefly and sieved if you want it smooth. A quart mould serves four to six.
Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York as chef and manager, assembled The International Cook Book (1906) as a survey of dishes from around the world, and this pudding belongs firmly to the French repertoire he trained in. The soufflé pudding — pouding soufflé — was a distinct nineteenth-century category, stiffened with crumbs, rice flour or a panada so that it could be baked in a mould and turned out whole, unlike the fragile dish-served soufflé. Rice flour appears often in period pastry work because it absorbs moisture without developing gluten, which mattered with a fruit as wet as strawberry; the tablespoon of rum is the standard finishing note of the era. Strawberries in a cookbook of this date still implied a short early-summer season, which is part of why the recipe treats a mere pint of them as worth a dedicated dessert.