Traitorous Brunch

On a side note, reader Emily asks if I can tell her where eggs Benedict comes from. Emily, it’s commonly thought that this dish, which consists of poached eggs, ham and Hollandaise sauce on an English muffin is named for Benedict Arnold, the turncoat American general who plotted to surrender the fort at West Point to the British during the Revolutionary War. It’s a shame that it isn’t because it would be an extremely clever culinary joke: just like General Arnold eggs Benedict is English underneath.

There are at least two competing theories about the origin of Eggs Benedict. One that it was invented at the legendary Delmonico’s by a Mrs. LeGrand Benedict who placed a creative off-menu order one morning in 1893. The other posits much the same thing, though it was the hung-over Lemuel Benedict at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1894.

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Making “Neo-Classic” Génoise

This spongecake is a more reliable version of classic génoise, and is good for all the same sorts of things: gâteaux, jelly rolls, bûche de Nöels (bûches?) you name it. And the process is simpler than a standard génoise. The only drawback is that it can’t handle as much syrup as a classic génoise, so if you’re making some very moist petits fours or a tres leeches cake, you’ll want to use the classic. It goes like this:

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Call it “Neo-Classic” Génoise

Let’s face it, not everyone likes classic génoise. It can be challenging to make and not all that pleasant to eat (heavy on egg whites, it’s often dry). So here’s a variation on a classic génoise that on the one hand is a lot easier to make: there’s no heating step, it’s hard to over-whip it (a big reason why many génoise attempts fail) and the batter ends up thicker, more spreadable and more capable of holding on to the bubbles it contains. On the other hand, it also looks and tastes better: it’s taller, fluffier and retains more moisture, again due to the reduction of egg whites. It calls for:

2 ounces (1/4 cup) milk
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs, room temperature
3 egg yolks, room temperature
6 ounces (1 cup minus two tablespoons) sugar
3.75 ounces (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour

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Making Crème Mousseline

Crème mousseline — also known as German buttercream — is a silky and decadent combination of pastry cream and butter. It’s often used as a filling, though it works just as well as a frosting, as the “buttercream” moniker implies. The proportions for crème mousseline are 2 cups pastry cream to one cup very soft butter. Yeah, I know. Wow.

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The Holiday Keep-It-Simple Strategy

This is the time of year when I start to receive emails from readers asking for ideas for fancy holiday meal pastries. My response is almost always the same: keep it simple. A well-executed simple sweet beats a hastily-prepared complex pastry any day of the week. That’s especially true during a holiday dinner where guests are already loading up on appetizers, main courses and fixin’s. An opulent dessert on top of a multi-course banquet generally puts diners over the edge.

So my advice is to think about the flow of your meal and come up with a nice, understated capper. True fancy pastries, it’s important to remember, weren’t created for dessert. Napoleons, Sacher torte and Marjolaine slices are supposed to be consumed in the afternoon, as a between meal treat…

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Is there an alternative to classic génoise?

So ask several readers who are interested in making a fraisier but have terrible luck with génoise. The answer is that indeed there are. The pastry world abounds with spongecakes of different kinds, many of them created for the express purpose of improving on the standard génoise, which many people find not only hard to […]

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On “Natural Butter Flavors”

Reader Jo writes:

Hey Joe! Is diacetyl one of the “natural butter flavors” that I so often see on butter packages?

Indeed it is, Jo. Many American mass-market butters, especially unsalted butters, contain “natural flavors.” The most common are diacetyl, acetic acid, acetoin, ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, 2-butanone and others. In other words, the typical brew of compounds that fermenting bacteria create as they digest sugars.

It all sounds like stuff that runs off a parking lot in a rain storm, but in fact these naturally-occurring chemicals are what give fermented foods – from beer to bread to yogurt and pickles – their flavor. Depending on the proportion in which they’re delivered, they can taste tangy, flowery, bitter, gamey or…buttery.

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On the Flavor of Butter

Several fierce objections to the idea that butter does’t have much flavor on its own. Being a lover of butter, I’m down with that. However I think it can be fairly said that a lot of factors influence the flavor of butter. In some circumstances butter has lots of flavor, in others it doesn’t.

For example, when it’s cold. A cold pat of butter, even the fiercest butter lover will concede, has less flavor than hot, melted butter. It still tastes like butter of course, and that’s due in large part to a specific compound, a ketone called diacetyl. Diacetyl is abundant in fermented foods, and ranks in the top five on my list of All-Time Yummiest Molecules. But diactyl isn’t the only ketone in cold butter. There are many others, but most of them are locked up inside larger organic acid molecules, and that prevents us from tasting them.

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Distractions, Distractions

A couple of work crises have kept me from baking much this week, so posting has been a little light. I have, however, been listening to some good music. If you’re in the market for some, check Jake Bugg, a nineteen-year-old Brit who somehow manages to wrap Greenwich Village folk together with the Everly Brothers and a jumpin’ Johnny Cash rhythm. I remain sucker for a guitar and a backbeat.

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