The melting cocoa centre, slightly crunchy texture, and lightness of the chocolate soufflé have made it the traditional dessert of the Grill at the Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo.
A Brief History of the Soufflé
The soufflé was first mentioned in the early eighteenth century by French master cook Vincent La Chapelle. The early nineteenth-century French chef Marie-Antoine Carême is credited with the invention and popularisation of the soufflé. A soufflé is a baked egg-based dish that dates back to the early eighteenth century in France. It can be served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert when combined with other ingredients. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler which is defined as “to blow”, “to breathe”, “to inflate” or “to puff”.
This dessert reached its peak of popularity in 1979, a favored dessert for special occasions and became though, much less popular throughout the 1980s onward. coinciding with the shrinking popularity of the classic French restaurant. The dessert is notoriously tricky to make, but it is a worthy culinary challenge to master as the results are magical to enjoy.
RECIPE
Traditional Chocolate Soufflé
Recipe for 4 persons / Cook time: 13 minutes
Ingredients
For the pastry cream
- 5 egg yolks
- 50 cl whole milk
- 100 g caster sugar
- 65 g all-purpose flour
For the batter of soufflé
- 400 g egg whites (1 egg white = 30 g)
- 200 g caster sugar
- 20 g butter
- 85 g cocoa powder
- 400 g pastry cream
- 10 g icing sugar & cocoa powder at the end on the top
Method
- Bring the whole milk to boil in a pan.
- Mix egg yolks, caster sugar and the floor, pour the boiling milk into this mixture and replace it over low heat.
- Take two cake moulds, butter it and sugar it.
- Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. At the last moment, adding caster sugar to strengthen egg whites.
- Add to the pastry cream: cocoa powder and smoothly the egg whites.
- Pour the mixture into cake moulds and bake it directly for 13 minutes at 200°C.
- Right out of the oven, sprinkle with icing sugar and cocoa powder.
