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Valois Pudding
Place two ounces butter in bowl, beat it up with a wooden spoon for five minutes, then add one by one the yolks of four eggs, sharply beating while adding them. Add the grated rind of a sound orange, two ounces each sugar and flour, half teaspoon vanilla essence, and gently mix with skimmer. Beat up whites of the three eggs to a stiff froth, add to preparation and gently mix with skimmer. Lightly butter and flour a plain pudding mould, drop in preparation, place in a saucepan, pour in hot water up to half the height of mould, then set in oven for forty minutes. Remove, unmould pudding on a large dish, pour a Malaga Sabayon sauce over and serve.
A small steamed-baked sponge in the French style, cooked in a water bath and sauced at table. The whole thing hinges on folding, not stirring, once the whites go in.
- The egg count is inconsistentFour yolks go in, but only three whites come back, and the text refers to "the three eggs" as though three had been called for. Whether this is a printing slip or intentional is not clear from the page; using all four whites gives a lighter, slightly drier pudding.
- Ounces are weightsTwo ounces butter is 4 tablespoons (55 g). Two ounces each sugar and flour is about 1/4 cup sugar and a scant 1/2 cup flour. Weighing matters here because there is no leavening but the whites.
- "Skimmer"A flat perforated skimming spoon, used as a folding tool. A large silicone spatula does the same job: cut down through the centre, sweep along the bottom, turn over, rotate the bowl.
- Oven temperatureNot stated. For a bain-marie sponge of this kind set the oven to 325-350F. Higher, and the outside sets and cracks before the centre rises.
- The water bathUse a saucepan or deep dish that will not scorch dry, and top up with boiling water if it falls below the halfway mark. A folded cloth or trivet under the mould keeps the base from cooking too fast.
- Mould sizeThis quantity suits a 1-pint (500 ml) plain mould or charlotte tin, filled no more than three-quarters. Forty minutes is right for that size; the pudding is done when the centre springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Butter and flour the mould thoroughlyThere is nothing in the batter to help it release. Brush softened butter into every corner of the plain mould, dust with flour and tap out the excess before filling.
- Malaga SabayonA sabayon (zabaglione) whisked with sweet Malaga wine in place of Marsala: yolks, sugar and wine beaten over barely simmering water until thick and foaming. Make it while the pudding rests, since it collapses on standing.
- YieldFour small servings, or two generous ones. The pudding is meant to be eaten warm, not chilled.
"Valois" is one of the many dish names French cookery borrowed from the royal houses -- alongside Bourbon, Condé, and Orléans -- and, like most of them, it marks a style rather than any documented connection to the family. The pudding itself belongs to the great class of hot moulded sponges cooked au bain-marie that filled the entremets course of late nineteenth-century menus. The sabayon poured over it -- here made with sweet Malaga wine from southern Spain rather than the usual Sicilian Marsala -- is the one flourish that nods elsewhere.