Home › Pastry and Sweets › Biscuit (Biscotto Granulated sugar nine)
Biscuit (Biscotto Granulated sugar nine)
(Biscotto) Granulated sugar, nine ounces, Flour, four ounces, Potato meal, two ounces, Taste of lemon peel.
Six eggs. Stir for at least half an hour the yolks of the eggs with the sugar and a tablespoonful only of the flour and meal, using a ladle. Beat the whites of the eggs until they are quite firm, mix slowly with the first mixture and when they are well incorporated pour over from a sieve the flour and the potato meal, previously dried in the sun or on the fire.
Bake in a tin where the mixture comes about one inch and a half thick, previously greasing the tin with cold butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar mixed with flour.
In these cakes with beaten whites the following method can also be followed: mix and stir first the yolks with the sugar, then put the flour then, after a good kneading, beat the whites until they are firm, pour two tablespoonfuls to soften the mixture, then the rest little by little. 192
A pan di Spagna-style sponge leavened entirely by beaten egg, translated from the Italian with several assumptions left unstated. Read the whole thing before starting, because the egg count is missing.
- The missing eggsThe ingredient list gives sugar, flour and potato meal but never says how many eggs, though the method needs both yolks and whites. For nine ounces of sugar and six ounces of dry ingredients, a sponge of this type would normally take six to eight eggs; the original is genuinely ambiguous on the point.
- Potato mealThis is fecola di patate, potato starch, not dried potato flakes or potato flour ground from whole tubers. Cornstarch behaves closely enough if you cannot find it. Its job is to lighten the crumb by diluting the wheat gluten.
- Drying the flourWarming flour and starch "in the sun or on the fire" drove off damp from sacks stored in unheated pantries. Modern packaged flour is dry enough; skip it, or spread it on a tray in a 200F oven for ten minutes if the bag has been open a long time.
- Half an hour of stirringBeating yolks and sugar to the pale, ribboning stage takes three to four minutes in a stand mixer on medium-high. The half hour with a ladle is the hand-work equivalent, not a target in itself. Stop when a lifted trail sits on the surface for a few seconds.
- Folding orderThe hinge of the recipe: whites go in slowly and the sifted flour and starch rain over the top afterwards, so the flour is never beaten into a wet batter. Fold with a spatula until no dry streaks remain and no longer, or the sponge sinks.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A sponge an inch and a half deep wants a moderate oven, 350F, for roughly 30 to 40 minutes; it is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- The tinCold butter plus a dusting of mixed sugar and flour is the period version of greasing and flouring, and the sugar gives a fine crisp shell. A parchment-lined tin does the same job with less risk of sticking; choose one that lets the batter sit about an inch and a half deep, as the recipe specifies.
- The second methodThe alternative given at the end is a different sequence, not a variation on the flavour: yolks and sugar, then all the flour, then the stiff whites loosened in with two spoonfuls first. Use one method or the other, not a blend of the two.
- YieldDepending on the tin and the number of eggs used, roughly eight to ten servings. It keeps poorly on its own and is at its best the day it is made, or split and layered with cream or preserves.
This is one of the sponge cakes from Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, first published in 1891 and reaching English readers through Maria Gentile's abridged translation as The Italian Cook Book. Artusi wrote for the households of a newly unified Italy, collecting recipes sent to him by correspondents and testing them in his own Florentine kitchen; the entries read as conversational notes rather than formal formulas, and quantities are sometimes incomplete. The biscotto here belongs to the pan di Spagna family, cakes raised by egg alone; chemical leaveners appear only occasionally elsewhere in Artusi. Potato starch is a common feature of Italian sponges of this kind, keeping the crumb dry and fine. Cakes like this could be sliced and served plain, or used as the base for layered and soaked desserts.