Chevreuse Pudding

Pouding à la Chevreuse (semolina pudding with kirsch sabayon) teaches one true thing: the pudding waits for the sabayon, never the sabayon for the pudding. Sabayon is a warm whisked egg sauce, and here it should be pale, glossy, fragrant with kirsch, and light enough to fall in broad ribbons over the tender semolina. Before you touch a pan, set the table and make certain your guests are ready.

The classical entry is brief because it assumed cooks who already knew both preparations, a pastry cook to turn out the puddings and a saucier on staff to whisk the sauce at the last instant. At home, four small ramekins replace the service mold, and one heatproof bowl over a shallow bain-marie (water bath) replaces that two-person choreography. The entry gives the composition rather than household quantities, so this version fixes it at four servings. Only the scale and order of service change. The tender semolina, gentle water bath, and kirsch sabayon are the dish; the brigade choreography is scaffolding and can go. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Cook and loosen the puddings first, then begin the sabayon. Keep the bowl above, never in, the barely simmering water, and whisk without pause until the trail of the whisk holds for a heartbeat. That is the step that matters. Everything else can wait.