The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
In Gouffé’s ‘Royal Cookery Book’ (the Household Edition of which
contains a great deal that is really useful to an English housewife) I
find a better recipe under the name of ‘_Cheese Soufflés_.’ He says:
‘Put two ounces and a quarter of flour in a stewpan, with one pint and
a half of milk; season with salt and pepper; stew over the fire till
boiling, and should there be any lumps, strain the _soufflé_ paste
through a tammy cloth; add seven ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and
seven yolks of eggs; whip the whites till they are firm, and add them
to the mixture; fill some paper cases with it, and bake in the oven for
fifteen minutes.’
Cre-Fydd says: ‘Grate six ounces of rich cheese (Parmesan is the best);
put it into an enamelled saucepan, with a teaspoonful of flour of
mustard, a saltspoonful of white pepper, a grain of cayenne, the sixth
part of a nutmeg, grated, two ounces of butter, two tablespoonfuls of
baked flour, and a gill of new milk; stir it over a slow fire till
it becomes like smooth, thick cream (but it must not boil); add the
well-beaten yolks of six eggs, beat for ten minutes, then add the
whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth; put the mixture into a tin
or a cardboard mould, and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes.
Serve immediately.’
Here is a true cookery of cheese by solution, and the result is an
excellent dish. But there is some unnecessary complication and kitchen
pedantry involved. The _soufflé_ part of the business is a mere puffing
up of the mixture for the purpose of displaying the cleverness of the
cook, being quite useless to the consumer, as it subsides before it
can be eaten. It further involves practical mischief, as it cannot be
obtained without toasting the surface of the cheese into an air-tight
leathery skin that is abnormally indigestible. The following is my own
simplified recipe:
Take a quarter of a pound of grated cheese; add it to a gill of
milk in which is dissolved as much powdered _bicarbonate of potash_
as will stand upon a threepenny-piece; mustard, pepper, &c., as
prescribed above by Cre-Fydd.[13] Heat this carefully until the cheese
is completely dissolved. Then beat up three eggs, yolks and whites
together, and add them to this solution of cheese, stirring the whole.
Now take a shallow metal or earthenware dish or tray that will bear
heating; put a little butter on this, and heat the butter till it
frizzles. Then pour the mixture into the tray, and bake or fry it until
it is nearly solidified.
A cheaper dish may be made by increasing the proportion of cheese—say,
six to eight ounces to three eggs, or only one egg to a quarter of a
pound of cheese for a hard-working man with powerful digestion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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