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Almond Macaroons
Pour boiling water on half a pound almonds, take skins off and throw into cold water for a few moments, then take out and pound (adding a table-spoon essence lemon) to a smooth paste, add one pound of pulverized sugar and whites of three eggs, and work the paste well together with back of spoon; dip the hands in water and roll mixture into balls the size of a nutmeg, and lay on buttered paper an inch apart; when done, dip the hands in water and pass gently over the macaroons, making the surface smooth and shining; set in a cool oven three-quarters of an hour. If this recipe is strictly followed, the macaroons will be found equal to any made by professional confectioners. -Mrs. L. S. W.
A plain almond-white-sugar-egg-white macaroon of the older European type, with no coconut and no leavening. Two things decide the outcome: how fine the almond paste is, and how gently they bake.
- "A cool oven" means 300F or lower"A cool oven" -- conventionally taken to be somewhere in the region of 250-300F, though the book gives no numbers. These are meant to dry out and set rather than brown. About 300F for the recipe's three-quarters of an hour is realistic for balls this size. Anything at 350F and above will color the outsides before the centers are firm.
- BlanchingBoiling water and a cold plunge is still the method. Slip the skins off while the almonds are warm and dry them well on a towel, because wet almonds will loosen the paste and spread the cookies.
- PoundingHalf a pound of blanched almonds goes to paste in a food processor in a couple of minutes. Pulse rather than run it, and add a spoonful of the sugar if it starts turning to almond butter.
- "Essence of lemon"This is lemon extract. Home-made essences varied in strength, so a tablespoon of modern commercial extract will likely dominate; 1 to 2 teaspoons is closer to the intent.
- "Pulverized sugar"In this period the term meant granulated sugar ground fine, without the cornstarch in today's confectioners' sugar. Superfine (caster) sugar is the nearest match; modern powdered sugar will work but gives a slightly softer, chalkier crumb.
- Egg whitesEgg size was ungraded and variable, so three period whites may well amount to less than three of today's large ones. Start with two whites plus part of a third and add only enough to bring the mass together into a stiff, workable paste.
- "The size of a nutmeg"Roughly an inch across, about two teaspoons of paste. Wet hands keep the paste from sticking, and the second pass with wet hands is what gives the smooth, shining surface the recipe describes.
- Buttered paperParchment needs no butter and releases better. If the macaroons stick when cool, brush the underside of the paper with water and let them sit a minute.
- Yield and keepingThe quantities make close to 1 3/4 lb of paste, so at nutmeg size expect several dozen -- well upwards of fifty. They firm up as they cool and keep a week in a tin; they soften if stored with anything moist.
Macaroons of this kind - ground almonds, sugar, egg white, nothing else - are the ancestors of the whole family, and the name is generally traced to Italian maccherone, used for a paste or dough before it settled on pasta. They spread through Italian and French convent and confectioner traditions long before the coconut version took over American baking, and the recipe's boast about equalling "professional confectioners" is the point: almond work was the confectioner's trade, requiring a mortar, patience, and expensive nuts. That it appears in Buckeye Cookery, contributed by a reader signing herself Mrs. L. S. W., shows Ohio households in the 1870s taking on shop work at home.