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Gimblettes
(French Doughnuts.) Beat 3 eggs very light, add 4 ounces of powdered sugar, 2 spoonfuls of chopped lemon peel, and 6 tablespoonfuls of flour. Roll out, after mixing well, into a thin paste, cut into rings, and poach them in boiling water. When they rise to the top, take off, brush with yolk of egg, and bake in a moderate oven 20 minutes.
A boiled-then-baked ring, closer to a bagel or a taralli than to anything fried, despite the parenthetical "French Doughnuts." The proportions as printed are terse and one of them will not work without adjustment.
- The flour is the problemThree eggs and 4 oz of sugar against 6 tablespoonfuls of flour gives a slack batter, not a paste you can roll thin and cut into rings. Expect to work in flour until you have a stiff, kneadable dough — with eggs this size that is likely to be two to three cups. The original assumes a cook who knows what a rollable paste feels like.
- Powdered sugarIn this period this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Caster or superfine sugar is the closest match. Four ounces is roughly half a cup.
- SpoonfulsAn unqualified "spoonful" in this period is usually a tablespoon, but for chopped lemon peel two of them is a lot. Use the finely grated zest of one large lemon and taste the dough before committing to more.
- Lemon peelChop or grate only the yellow zest. Any white pith left in will turn the finished rings bitter, and there is nothing else in the dough to hide it.
- PoachingDrop the rings into water at a bare simmer rather than a hard boil, which tears them. They surface within a minute or two of setting; lift them out then and drain on a towel, or the surface stays gummy under the glaze.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F by modern reckoning; the book gives no temperatures. Twenty minutes should give firm, pale-gold rings with a shiny crust from the yolk wash; they crisp further as they cool.
- Egg washBrush the yolk on only after the rings have drained and their surfaces look dull rather than wet, or the glaze slides off in the oven.
- Yield and keepingYield depends on how much flour you work in; rings cut about two inches across might give something on the order of eighteen to twenty. They are dry, biscuit-like keepers rather than soft doughnuts, and should hold for some days in a tin.
Gimblettes are associated with the south of France, and are best known from Albi, where the gimblette d'Albi is a hard little ring flavoured with lemon or orange-flower water. The name has been linked to the same root as the Italian ciambella, a ring-shaped cake, though the derivation is not settled. The boiling-then-baking method they share with ciambelle, taralli and bagels is an old way of setting a lean dough's surface so it bakes glossy and keeps well. The parenthetical "French Doughnuts" would have been misleading to readers who associated the word with fried rings rather than poached ones.