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Gateau St. Honore
(Paris.) This is a more fancy brioche, made somewhat differently. Boil 2 gills water, 3 ounces butter, and a teaspoonful of sugar for 2 minutes, add 1/2 pound flour, mix until the paste is smooth and does not stick to the pan. Take off and add, one by one, 6 unbeaten eggs. Butter a pie plate and cover with a thin layer of this, then make balls of the rest and set on as a border, fastening with white of egg. Bake until a light brown, serve cold with a filling in centre of preserves, and whipped cream on top.
This is pâte à choux under an old name, baked as a base with a ring of puffs around the rim. The original gives no oven temperature and no timing, so the two things that decide success — drying the paste and setting the puffs — are left to the cook.
- The measures in modern termsTwo gills is one cup of water; three ounces of butter is six tablespoons; half a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups. Six eggs for that quantity of flour is on the generous side, so add the last one only if the paste still holds a stiff ribbon.
- "Boil ... for 2 minutes"What matters is that the butter has fully melted before the water reaches a rolling boil, not the two minutes as such. Boiling longer than necessary evaporates water and throws off the flour-to-liquid ratio.
- The hinge: dry the pasteAfter the flour goes in, keep the pan on the heat and beat until the mass leaves the sides cleanly and a film shows on the pan bottom, roughly two to three minutes. Choux that has not been dried out will not rise properly and will collapse damp.
- Cool before the eggsLet the paste sit off the heat for four or five minutes before the first egg, or the egg scrambles. Beat each in until it is completely absorbed before adding the next; the finished paste should fall from the spoon in a thick, glossy V.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F until the puffs are well risen and coloured, around 20 minutes, then drop to 350F for another 10 to 15 to dry the interiors. Do not open the door in the first fifteen minutes.
- The egg-white glueBrushing white of egg where the balls meet the base is what stops the border sliding off as the paste expands. Set the balls touching each other around the rim so they support one another as they rise.
- "A more fancy brioche"The book's wording is loose — there is no yeast here and nothing to prove. Treat it as choux pastry from the outset.
- Filling and timingFill only once the pastry is completely cold, and as close to serving as possible; preserves and cream both soften choux within an hour or two. No plate size is specified; a standard pie plate would give six to eight portions.
The gâteau St-Honoré is named for the patron saint of bakers, and its invention is traditionally credited to a Parisian pâtissier of the mid-nineteenth century, though the details vary from telling to telling. The classic version is a pastry base ringed with caramel-dipped choux puffs and filled with a stiffened pastry cream; what appears here is a simplified rendering, with jam and whipped cream standing in for the crème and the caramel dropped entirely.