Souffléd Pudding à la Régence

Pouding Soufflé à la Régence (vanilla souffléd pudding poached in caramel) teaches one true thing before you touch a pan: caramel sets the clock, and the cook must be ready before the sugar is. Once it reaches deep amber, you have seconds to pour, turn, and clothe the mould before it hardens. Work calmly, but work at once.

The source assumed a pastry station, a copper sugar pan, sugar stages judged by practiced fingers, and another pair of hands making the sauce. Your honest equivalents are a small stainless-steel saucepan, a thermometer, an electric mixer, and one 1-litre mould. Separate stations and the broken-ice arrangement belonging to the aspic cross-reference are brigade scaffolding, so they go. The caramel clothing, vanilla soufflé preparation, gentle bain-marie, and separate crème anglaise au caramel (caramel English custard) are the dish, so they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

When it turns out, the pudding should stand softly beneath a lacquer of flowing amber caramel, airy inside but substantial enough to take a spoon. Set the mould beside the stove, dry and within arm's reach, before the sugar goes on. That readiness decides the dish.