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Biscuits Sultan
(Biscotto alla sultana) Granulated sugar, six ounces.
Flour, four ounces.
Potato meal, two ounces.
Currants, three ounces.
Candied fruits, one ounce.
Five eggs.
A taste of lemon peel, Two tablespoonfuls of brandy.
Put first on the fire the currants and the candied fruits cut in very little cubes with as much brandy or cognac as is necessary to cover them: when it boils, light the brandy and let it burn out of the fire until the liquor is all consumed: then remove the currants and candy and let them dry in a folded napkin. Then stir for half an hour the sugar with the egg-yolks and the taste of lemon peel. Beat well the white of the eggs and pour them on the sugar and yolks. Add the flour and potato meal letting them fall from a sieve and stir slowly until everything is well mixed together. Add the currants and the pieces of candied fruits and pour the mixing in a smooth mold or in a high and round cake-dish. Grease the mold or the dish with butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar or flour. Put at once in the oven to avoid that the currants and the candied fruits fall in the oven. 186
A brandy-soaked fruit sponge in the Artusi mold, raised entirely by beaten eggs. The whole thing hinges on how gently the flour and fruit go in, and on getting it into a hot oven before the fruit settles.
- Weights, not cupsSix ounces sugar is about 170 g, four ounces flour about 115 g, two ounces potato meal about 55 g, three ounces currants about 85 g. Use a scale; the batter is a sponge and the ratio of egg to dry matters.
- Potato mealThis means potato starch (potato flour in older British usage), not dried potato flakes. It keeps the crumb light and slightly short; cornstarch is the closest substitute.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisins, not fresh red or black currants. Modern packaged currants are already soft, so the brandy step is for flavour rather than plumping.
- The flaming stepBring the fruit and brandy to a boil, then take the pan well away from the burner and any overhead range hood before lighting it. Let it burn out untouched; the point is to drive off the alcohol and leave the fruit tacky rather than wet. Dry the fruit thoroughly or it will sink.
- Half an hour of stirringYolks and sugar were beaten by hand to a pale ribbon. Five minutes on a stand mixer at medium-high does the same work: the mixture should fall in a thick ribbon that holds its trace for a second or two.
- FoldingWhites beaten to soft, not stiff, peaks fold in more evenly. Sift the flour and potato starch over the surface and fold with a spatula in as few strokes as will incorporate it; overworking here is the usual cause of a dense, rubbery cake.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this batter. The instruction to bake "at once" is real advice: a batter left standing loosens and the fruit drops to the bottom.
- Pan and timingAn 8-inch round pan or a 6-cup tube or kugelhopf mold, buttered and dusted with sugar or flour as directed. Expect 40 to 50 minutes; a skewer in the centre should come out clean and the cake should just be pulling from the sides.
- YieldAbout eight to ten slices. It keeps two or three days wrapped and is better on the second day, sliced thin with coffee or a sweet wine.
The Italian title, biscotto alla sultana, is generally taken to refer to dried fruit — though note that this recipe calls for currants and candied fruit rather than sultanas, and the word "sultana" itself carries an Ottoman association. Dried-fruit cakes with names like sultana turn up across nineteenth-century European baking, from Italian sponges to the British sultana cake. Note also that biscotto here does not mean the hard twice-baked cookie an English speaker expects; in this period the word covered a range of sweet baked things, including tall sponge cakes baked in a mold. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) belongs to the same Italian domestic tradition as Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina, which contains many egg-raised, starch-lightened cakes; here the lift comes entirely from long-beaten yolks and separately whipped whites, which is why the recipe spends more words on stirring than on baking.