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Strawberry Shortcake
Carefully remove stems, wash and drain a quart very fresh, ripe strawberries, and place in a bowl with three ounces powdered sugar, two tablespoons rum and a tablespoon kirsch. Mix well in seasoning and let stand in a cold place until required, turning in the seasoning once in a while.
Crack four fresh eggs in a copper basin, add four ounces sugar, then set basin on range and briskly whisk twelve minutes; remove from range, add four ounces sifted flour, one teaspoon vanilla essence, a quarter teaspoon baking powder, and gently mix with skimmer one minute. Add three ounces melted butter, mix a minute longer. Lightly butter a ten-inch-square pastry tin, line bottom with a buttered white paper, drop in the preparation and neatly smooth surface. Set in oven to bake twenty minutes, remove and let cool off, turn cake on a table, tear off paper and split in two crosswise. Have a half pint vanilla whipped cream ready, and spread one-third of the cream over surface, cut side, of one-half of cake, then carefully arrange all the strawberries over the cream. Pour liquor of strawberries in bowl over half of cake and place other half on top of the strawberries. Then cut the cake in six even pieces, decorate the surface of each with rest of whipped cream, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, sprinkle a little sugar over and serve.
This is not the biscuit-dough shortcake of American home baking but a French genoise, split, soaked and filled. The whole thing hinges on the whisked egg foam, which is the only leavening that matters.
- The copper basin is a sabayon stepEggs and sugar are whisked over gentle heat to about 110-120F, until the mixture is warm to a fingertip, pale, and holds a thick ribbon off the whisk. Twelve minutes is realistic by hand; a stand mixer will get there faster once the mixture is warmed off the heat. Do not let the base get hot enough to set the eggs.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A genoise of this size bakes at 350F for the twenty minutes stated; it is done when the surface springs back and the edges pull from the tin.
- Weights to volumesFour ounces sugar is about 1/2 cup plus 1 to 2 tablespoons; four ounces sifted flour is a scant cup; three ounces melted butter is 6 tablespoons. Three ounces powdered sugar on the berries is roughly a scant 1/2 cup. Weighing is far more reliable here than measuring.
- "Powdered sugar"In books of this period this generally means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match, and dissolves properly into the macerating berries.
- Folding in the butterThe melted butter must be warm, not hot, and poured down the side of the bowl into a portion of the batter first. Dumped straight into the centre it deflates the foam and sinks to the bottom as a greasy seam. The "skimmer" here is simply a perforated spoon; a flexible spatula does the job better.
- Half a pint of whipped creamRead this as a half pint of cream before whipping, that is 1 cup, sweetened and flavoured with vanilla. It roughly doubles in volume, which is the right amount for a filling plus six decorated portions.
- The tinA ten-inch square tin gives a fairly thin cake, which is what you want for splitting crosswise. Butter it, line the base with parchment in place of the buttered paper, and turn the cake out while still slightly warm.
- Assembly and timingMacerate the berries at least an hour so they give up juice, but assemble close to serving: the syrup poured over the bottom layer softens the crumb quickly and the cake will slump if it sits. Yields six portions as written.
- The alcoholTwo tablespoons rum and one of kirsch across a quart of berries is a light hand, but it is not cooked off. Omit both and macerate with sugar and a little lemon juice if serving children.
Shortcake in nineteenth-century America meant a rich biscuit dough, split hot and filled with sweetened fruit; this version quietly replaces it with a French genoise, the whisked whole-egg sponge that professional pastry kitchens of the period built almost everything on. The tell is the copper basin and the twelve minutes of whisking over the range: copper was standard in restaurant kitchens for egg work, and the warm-foam method belongs to the trained pastry cook rather than the household baker. The rum and kirsch maceration is Continental too, kirsch being the clear cherry brandy long associated with stone-fruit and berry desserts in eastern France, Switzerland and the Rhineland. Even the instruction to dress the cut pieces on a dish with a folded napkin is restaurant service convention, the napkin often said to keep the pieces from sliding as the platter is carried. The result is an American dessert name attached to an entirely hotel-French construction, which is a fair summary of what fashionable dining in the United States looked like around the turn of the twentieth century.