Even after my many years in this steam-heated country, I cannot really enjoy eating cold or frozen desserts in the wintertime! This is, of course, the result of youthful conditioning. When I was a boy in France, and winters were so cold that we children set out for school with a hot baked potato in each pocket to warm our hands and provide a hot snack on the way, cold desserts were reserved for the summer.
Of course, we were not actually cold at home. During the cool months, we lived and ate in one big room, and a great old-fashioned fireplace kept us comfortable while we children did our lessons, Mother prepared our meals, and Father worked over his accounts. And in the deep of winter, the great black cookstove never stopped burning. But even that fell far short of the warmth supplied by the radiator which sizzles under every American window. Naturally, warm desserts held more appeal for us than cold.
Even today in the great hotels of Paris and London, cold weather brings hot desserts to the menu, and fritters, soufflés, and flambéed fruits take precedence over ice creams and mousses. The simpler puddings, too, are served warm; many a gourmet prefers a warm rice pudding or even a warm crème renversée au caramel or warm oeufs à la neige -which come as a surprise to the American palate-to the cold versions. Oeufs à la neige served warm are so popular that they have a traditional garnish: the meringues which float on the warm soft custard are sprinkled with sugar and glazed with a red hot tisonnier, or flat poker, to make an attractive and appetizing crust. I should like to introduce you in this lesson to the pleasures of warm puddings other than the conventional steamed puddings, which of course are always served piping hot.
The range of hot desserts, les entremets chauds, is, you see, very wide, since it includes everything from the homeliest of puddings to the most elaborate and dramatic preparations.
The first flambéed pudding I ever saw was not, as you might logically suppose, a flamed Christmas pudding, but rather our Sainte-Cécile pudding. This is a warm custard dessert traditional in many parts of France. Sainte Cécile is the patron saint of French musicians, and November 22nd, Sainte-Cécile Day, was always the occasion for a banquet in honor of the town's musicians; providing, of course, that our troupe of forty or fifty-most of them trumpetershad done well in the competitions of the previous summer! I was quite a small boy when for the first time the fanfare of our town's musicians won first prize at the concours. After much local discussion, it was decided that the banquet should take place chez Madame Marie. Now, Madame Marie was a good friend of my mother's, and I had made a habit of taking to Madame flowers for her table, the first wild (lowers of spring, which she particularly loved, the traditional muguets, or lily of the valley of the first of May, and other blooms as they came along. As a reward. I was often permitted to watch when special preparations were under way in the kitchen. On the day of the great banquet, I saw the chef fill the great vol-au-vents and carefully replace the fragile crusty covers. I watched with fascination while he pulled the roasted filets of beef from the oven and arranged the garniture around them on the serving platters. But I was most intrigued, because this was something I had never seen before, when my idol, the rosy cheeked chef, warmed kitsch in a copper pan, poured it carefully over many-colored fruits in the centers of warm custard rings in a row and applied a lighted taper to each dish. I still remember those spectacular blue flames, and to this day I like to make a Sainte-Cécile pudding in November of each year, as a souvenir of that happy rime.
The Sainte-Cécile pudding is typical of the custard puddings that are served warm. This month I should like to give particular attention to the warm desserts that use milk and egg custards as the base for rice, bread, or other ingredients, or use the bland, creamy custard as a foil for fruit.
These puddings are baked rather than steamed, and they are unmolded for serving while they are still warm. A hot pudding is admittedly difficult to unmold, but allowing it to stand for a few minutes and running a flat knife around the inside rim to loosen the sides before attempting to turn the pudding out of the mold makes it easier to handle. The many eggs and egg yolks prescribed for these puddings also help the custard to keep its shape. Steamed puddings have a substantial solidity endowed by bread crumbs, flour, fat, and fruit; baked custard mixtures are far from solid. On the contrary, they should be very light and delicate. But if you follow the rules as they are laid down here, you should have successful results. Be careful not to beat the eggs too much; if too much air is incorporated into the mixture it may prove to be too fragile to unmold neatly. The custard is baked tinder carefully controlled temperature conditions; if the water in the pan is allowed to boil, tiny holes may form in the custard as it bakes, and these holes encourage cracks and the collapse of the pudding when the custard cools.
Vanilla is the favorite flavoring for custards. An inch or so of vanilla bean will flavor one pint of milk. Split the bean lengthwise along one side to expose the tiny seeds. The same piece of vanilla bean may be washed, dried. and used again and again until the last bit of flavor has been extracted. If vanilla extract is used, it must be added at the last possible minute, because cooking destroys much of the flavor of the extract.
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