Happy December everyone! In my neck of the woods we are just finishing our first snow storm of the year. And though shoveling can be a pain, I have to say I love the quiet contemplation when I’m looking out the window watching the snowflakes fall. It’s quite soothing… till a five year old jumps on you begging to go out an play for the umpteenth time. He’s excited in his own way.
So this continues my catch up with the Historical Food Fortnightly challenges this year, and this one is all about facing your fears. Whether it’s trying something you’ve never tasted before or a cooking method that you were afraid to try out. In this instance I went for a dreaded cooking method. Though there are several techniques that I’m hesitant to try, this was the one I had all the ingredients on hand for. So, for this challenge, I commenced in the finicky practice of making a souffle!
To Make a Souffle
Ingredients– 3 heaped tablespoons of potato flour, or rice flour, or arrowroot, 1 pint milk, 5 eggs, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, sifted sugar to taste, a pinch of salt, flavouring
Mode- Mix the potato flour, or whichever one of the above ingredients is used, with a little of the milk; put it into the saucepan, with the remainder of the milk, the butter, salt, and sufficient sugar to sweeten the whole nicely. Stir these ingredients over the heat until the mixture thickens; then take it off the heat, and let it cool a little. Separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs, beat the latter, and stir them into the souffle batter. Now whisk the whites of the eggs to the finest possible froth, for on this depends the excellence of the dish; stir them into the other ingredients, and add a few drops of essence of any flavoring that may be preferred, such as vanilla, lemon, orange, ginger, ect. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle dish, put it immediately into a moderately hot oven and bake for about ½ hour; then take it out, strew it with sifted sugar, and send it instantly to the table. The secret to making a souffle well is to have the eggs well whisked, but particularly the whites, the oven not too hot, and to send it to the table them moment it comes from the oven. If the souffle is allowed to stand before being sent to table, its appearance the goodness will be entirely spoiled.
Time- about ½ hour in the oven Sufficient for 3 to 4 persons
Beeton, Mrs. Book of Household Management 1865
Luckily Mrs. Isabella Beeton is so kind to be fairly detailed in her receipt description, but there are certainly a few holes that I had to figure out, as you will see below.
Here are all the ingredients laid out for the beginning of the souffle process.
The 2 cups of milk and 5 eggs were already stated but the rest took a little bit of experimentation. I ended up adding a little more than 1/2 cup of sugar (plus more for sprinkling on top) a half stick of butter (4 Tbl) and a 1/4 tsp of salt (figured it didn’t need much). And two splashes of vanilla (probably 2 tsps).
I also didn’t have potato or rice flour or arrowroot. So I found that I could substitute corn starch for arrowroot with 1 Tbl of corn starch equaling 2 tsp of arrowroot. So after some serious math (which I ended up rounding up, she did say heaping) I came to 10 Tbl of corn starch would equal 3 “heaped tablespoons” of arrowroot. But I had to make the souffle to really see if it would work properly.
I added the milk to the corn starch in the pan I was going to heat the mixture in…
… and proceeded to mix it well. It is important to mix the corn starch till it is fully incorporated because it will lump up and stick to the bottom. In fact if you leave it sitting for a few minutes make sure to mix it again as the corn starch will settle on its own.
Then I added the salt, the sugar and the butter to the corn starch and milk mixture. Gave it a quick whisk and brought it to the stove to heat up on a medium heat, stirring constantly.
This is not a step where you can walk away and do other things. Not only don’t you want the corn starch to settle and burn but once it starts to thicken it will do it VERY fast.
I would say it took about a minute and a half from looking like a warm milk to this thick consistency, kind of like wall paper paste. I know that’s not a very appetizing thought, but it is the closet I could think of in looks and feel. Maybe cream of wheat?
Either way I was shocked how thick it got and hoped that it wouldn’t make the souffle too heavy when combined with the other ingredients. But only time would tell.
Onto part two…
… The Separating of the Eggs!!!
As you can see I made sure to have several bowls handy to help with the process. The bowl in the middle is where I would do the actual separating. This way if I messed up I wouldn’t need to get rid of the other eggs. The large orange bowl is for the egg whites, realizing that once I started beating them they would grow ALOT. And the clear bowl would be for the yolks.
Let’s get crackin’!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Now there are certainly egg separators out there, but why have one more thing to wash. You can also use your hand, which is effective but kinda messy. I personally prefer the egg shell way. As long as you pass the yolk carefully between the two egg shells it works beautifully. It takes some practice but pretty easy once you get the rhythm.
And in no time at all… they’re done and separated!
Now to time to whip up those yolks! You can certainly use a hand or stand mixer for this process. But I honestly, again, didn’t feel like cleaning the beaters again to use for the egg whites (which needs everything to be perfectly clean and dry to keep it from deflating). So I hand whisked these, figuring it shouldn’t take me too long to get them good and airy.
Ten minutes later….
Yep, they’re whipped alright. And my right arm wasn’t liking life either. I probably could have done a touch more whipping to them, but I prefer not to have my arm fall off.
So I poured the whipped egg yolks into the now cooled milk/cornstarch/butter/sugar/salt paste. It is really important that the paste is cool because you don’t want to scramble your yolks.
I feel like I’m making so many unintended puns right now.
There we go, all mixed up! Now for the egg whites…
So it certainly looks like I’ve way compensated for the amount of egg whites in this bowl. But past experiences have led me to realize that if you are to whip egg whites you certainly need a bowl that is 10 times larger than the initial amount because they will GROW! And when I say grow…
… I mean GROW!
Who would have thought those few egg whites would grow into that! But this is the consistency we’re looking for, and I did the “hold the bowl over your husband’s head” test to make sure they were stiff enough. He wasn’t too happy about it, but didn’t complain too much because he loves me. And he knew that this could result in a delicious sweet treat later on.
So, having watched enough baking shows in the past I realize that this was a critical point in the recipe. I needed to mix these egg whites enough that there wouldn’t be pieces of egg white through the dish but also not too much so that I don’t deflate the eggs, where all the airy fluffiness of the souffle would come from. Even Mrs. Beeton points out that “…for on this depends the excellence of the dish…”, so I knew I had to get it right.
I added half the egg whites to the egg yolk/milk/cornstarch/butter/sugar/salt mixture and started to fold the whites in. Now if you don’t know what I mean about folding, it is cutting the egg whites into the mixture by going down the center with your spoon and then turning the batter over several times till the whites incorporate, very slowly as to not deflate them too badly. Sorry if that’s a bit confusing but there’s probably some videos on Youtube if you’d like to check it out.
There, half of them are mostly mixed in. Like I said you don’t want those white flecks because when the souffle cooks those will turn into firm egg whites rather than fluffy batter. But I knew I still had the second half of the bowl to incorporate so I held off from mixing it up fully.
In goes the second half of the egg whites…
… and so begins the folding for the second time, slowly and methodically, till…
.. there it is! A fully mixed souffle batter that is only partially deflated!
But still not out of the woods yet…
Because I was so busy concentrating on getting eggs whipped up and properly incorporated I didn’t have time to butter my souffle dish. So I begged my husband to do it with the other half stick of butter I had on hand from earlier, which he obliged to do. And though he got butter all over his hands I’m eternally grateful because I was able to pour the batter right in when it was all mixed together, losing no time or souffle air in the process.
So there it is! I honestly had no idea if this would work or not. The batter filled less than half of the dish.
What if it didn’t rise?!?
What if it came out flat like a pancake?!?
What if it did the opposite and exploded out of the oven?!?!
Ok, that’s going a bit too far.
Needless to say all the worry was in vain because it came out, risen and beautiful!
I had put the oven on at 350 degrees F and set the timer for 25 minutes and put the oven light on to see what was going on. Then I didn’t look for the 25 minutes because I was so nervous about it not rising. But, once the timer went off I looked through the window and found that it was rising! YES! But I also saw that it wasn’t brown at all. So I turned up the temperature to 375 degrees F and put on the timer again for another 25 minutes, check the every five to make sure it didn’t brown too much. About 20 minutes more and it was done and ready for tasting.
I didn’t want to open the oven till it was done because I didn’t want to risk having the souffle deflate before it finished baking. Just in case you were wondering.
I am very proud of how well it risen, and also very conscious that the moment I took it out of the oven it started to deflate in front of my eyes. I realized very quickly why Mrs. Beeton is very insistent on having it served right away.
I’m also reminded of a scene I thought was hilarious in “Downton Abbey” where Carson is running around frantic because the souffles were almost done and the changing gong hadn’t been rung yet. I thought it was just silly drama, but I realize now that it was very important that everyone be seated on time because every second counts when serving a souffle. I’ll panic along with Carson from now on when I see that scene again.
So enough with the admiring it, time to taste it!
I was so excited for this, but ate it slowly because I knew, right out of the oven, it would be like napalm.
Once it cooled down a bit, the first bite was lovely! It melted in your mouth, not heavy but light like a warm mousse. It was a wonderful sweetness, especially with the sugar dusted on top. And I was right to flavor this with vanilla too. And I can see why this would serve only 3 to 4 people, it is not heavy at all but delightfully light and creamy.
I am so glad I decided to try this. Even though I was apprehensive through a majority of the steps, I feel very proud to have made a successful souffle!