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Victoria Cakes
Plunge two ounces of almonds in boiling water for two minutes, drain, skin, place in a mortar with two tablespoons kirsch and half the white of an egg; pound to a paste, remove and place in a bowl, with three ounces fine sugar, a half saltspoon salt and one raw egg; briskly mix with a wooden spoon for three minutes, then add three egg yolks, two ounces flour and mix again for five minutes. Beat up the whites of the three eggs to a stiff froth and gradually add to the bowl, lightly mixing meanwhile. Lightly butter six individual savarin moulds and evenly divide the preparation in them, lay in a pastry pan and set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, pour a teaspoon rum over each cake, let cool off and unmould on a cold dish.
Beat up two gills double cream to a stiff froth, add a teaspoon vanilla essence, two ounces powdered sugar and a half pint small, well-picked, washed and dried fresh strawberries; mix well with a spoon, then divide the cream in the centre of the cakes and serve.
An almond sponge baked in small ring moulds and filled with strawberry cream — essentially six individual shortcake-savarins. The batter is leavened only by beaten egg white, so everything depends on how you fold.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a batter of this kind. Cakes this small may well be done before the stated twenty-five minutes, so check them early.
- Two gills of creamA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup (about 240 ml) of heavy cream, which whips to roughly two cups. That is generous for six cakes.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Half a saltspoon is an eighth of a teaspoon — a pinch.
- Fine sugar"Fine sugar" here is best read as caster sugar. "Powdered sugar" in the cream is finer still; modern confectioners' sugar will do the job and dissolves without grit, though period "powdered" sugar was not always identical to it.
- Savarin mouldsSmall ring moulds, about 3 to 4 inches across, holding roughly half a cup each; the well left by the centre is what holds the cream. A muffin tin works if you hollow the tops slightly after cooling, or use mini bundt cups.
- The almond pasteA food processor replaces the mortar. Blanch, skin and dry the almonds, then grind them with the kirsch and half egg white until smooth — any residual gritty texture stays in the finished crumb.
- The foldingThis is the hinge. Two ounces of flour to four eggs means the whites are the only lift there is; add them in three additions and stop the moment no streaks remain. The five minutes of vigorous beating applies to the yolk batter, not to the finished mixture.
- Rum and unmouldingSpoon the rum over while the cakes are still hot so it soaks rather than sits. Let them cool in the moulds before turning out or the tender crumb tears.
- Assembly and yieldSix cakes, one each. Fill only at the moment of serving — sugared strawberries weep quickly and will slacken the cream and soak the sponge within the hour.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with the French repertoire as it was actually cooked in American hotel kitchens, and the naming follows restaurant convention rather than any national tradition: through the later nineteenth century "Victoria" was attached to dozens of unrelated dishes — soups, sauces, garnishes, cakes — as a general compliment to the reigning British queen, much as "Impératrice" honoured Eugénie. The construction is more revealing than the name. A kirsch-scented almond sponge baked in savarin moulds, doused with rum and filled with sweetened whipped cream and small strawberries, it belongs to the family of ring-shaped cakes descended from the baba and savarin, which the Parisian pâtissier Stohrer's house is generally credited with popularising in the early nineteenth century. The insistence on small strawberries is practical: before modern cultivars, dessert berries were fraises des bois or comparably tiny garden fruit, sweet enough to need no cooking and small enough to sit in the hollow of a cake without being cut.