Valentine’s Day Treats.

Perhaps yesterday’s hearty recipe was not to the taste of your beloved? I think today’s choices have pretty universal appeal. They also only require easily available ingredients, and will serve well as last-minute – but very impressive - gifts, should you not be so well organised this year.

Cupid’s Wells.

Cut the rounds of puff-paste of three or four different sizes; use the largest one for the bottom, and cut the centres from the others, leaving the rims of different widths, and put them on the whole round, with the narrowest at the top. Bake, and fill with jelly.

The Universal Common-Sense Cookery Book (1887)

Bola d’Amour – Love Cake.

Take the yolks of eggs, as many as are required for the dish (about twelve), and beat them up in a pan with an equal weight of sugar, the same as sponge cades, using any kind of liquor or essence for flavouring. When the mixture is beaten up light and got thick, have ready some clarified butter in a stewpan, made hot enough for frying. Pour the mixture into a funnel, turning the hand while it is running, so that it may be formed into threads all over the surface of the pan. In about two minutes it will be done, when it should be taken out with a skimmer, and be placed on the dish for serving, garnishing it with any kind of preserve, and serve cold.

Another way is to beat up the eggs with some liquor and run into it some boiling syrup at the blow.

The modern housewife: or, Ménagère, (London, 1851) by Alexis Soyer

Quotation for the Day.

There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be travelling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.

Cyril Connolly.