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Almond Meringues
Whisk the whites of four eggs to the firmest possible froth, and mix slightly with them a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar. Have ready some pieces of writing-paper fastened upon a board, to prevent the meringues being too much coloured at the bottom, and drop them upon it in the form of a half egg. Sprinkle some finely-shred almonds over them, and upon this a little coarsely-sifted sugar. Place them in a cool oven, and, when they are firm, take them out, scoop out a little of the inside, place them on clean paper, upside down, and return them to the oven, and when they are crisp through they are done. When ready to serve, place almond cream inside, and join them together with the white of an egg. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for a small dish.
A straightforward pair-and-fill meringue, but two details in the original will trip up anyone used to modern proportions and modern ovens.
- The sugar is deliberately lowFour ounces of sugar to four whites is about half what a modern meringue recipe uses (about 2 oz per white is now standard). The result is lighter and more fragile, and less able to hold a piped shape. The original has them dropped in half-egg mounds.
- \"A cool oven\""A cool oven" -- the book gives no temperatures, but a cool oven means the bottom of a modern domestic oven. Half an hour may be optimistic at that heat for shells this size; work to the description rather than the clock -- firm enough to lift and hollow, then back in until crisp through, which may take considerably longer in total.
- Writing-paper on a boardThis is a heat buffer as much as a non-stick surface. Baking parchment on a doubled sheet pan, or an insulated sheet, does the same job of keeping the bases pale.
- Coarsely-sifted sugarNot caster and not icing sugar, but the coarse grains left in the sieve — the nearest modern equivalent is nib or pearl sugar, or granulated sugar, sprinkled on for crunch and sparkle.
- Finely-shred almondsBlanched almonds cut lengthwise into thin slivers, not the ground almonds or flaked almonds of a modern packet. Flaked almonds are the closest substitute and will toast at this low heat without colouring much.
- Almond creamA sweetened almond-flavoured cream rather than plain whipped cream with almonds stirred through it; the recipe does not say which preparation is meant. Fill only at the moment of serving, as the shells soften quickly once they meet anything moist.
- Joining with egg whiteA dab of raw white was a common confectioner's glue. If the meringues will sit before eating, a little royal icing made with pasteurised white or meringue powder does the same job without the raw egg.
- YieldThe original says only "sufficient for a small dish". Four whites at this sugar level will make a modest number of small shells, joined in pairs.
Meringue reached English household books through French and Swiss confectionery; the name is traditionally traced to the town of Meiringen in Switzerland, though the derivation is folk etymology rather than anything documented. The technique of hollowing a baked shell and returning it upside down to dry is often said to belong to the professional pastry kitchen, and its appearance in Cassell's — a late-Victorian dictionary aimed squarely at the middle-class household with a cook — suggests how far confectioner's methods had migrated into domestic use by the later nineteenth century. The costing of 8d is part of the same project: the book priced almost every dish, perhaps, as is often suggested, so that a mistress could check a cook's expenditure, and the sugar quantity here is low, though whether that reflects anything more than recipe proportion is uncertain.