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Almond Pastry
Blanch and pound to a paste three ounces of almonds and a little rose-water. Add to them gradually four ounces of loaf sugar and an equal weight of fine flour. Stir in the well-whisked whites of two eggs, and roll out on a pastry-board. Stamp out any pretty shapes that may be fancied; bake in a moderate oven, and keep in a dry place in a tin box to ornament sweet dishes of any description. Time to bake, eight or nine minutes. Probable cost, 8d.
A stiff almond-and-egg-white paste, stamped into shapes and baked crisp as a garnish for puddings and creams. The whole thing hinges on keeping the paste dry enough to roll, so add the egg white with restraint.
- Weights in cupsThree ounces of almonds is a generous 1/2 cup whole nuts, which grinds down to something under a cup of ground almonds. Four ounces of sugar is a scant 2/3 cup; four ounces of flour is a scant cup.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken or crushed as needed. Caster or granulated sugar is the direct replacement; because it is pounded with the almonds here, caster dissolves more evenly.
- Blanching and poundingPour boiling water over the almonds, stand two minutes, and the skins slip off. A food processor replaces the mortar, but pulse in bursts with the rose-water and some of the sugar to stop the nuts turning to oily butter.
- Rose-water"A little" is a teaspoon or so of ordinary bottled rose-water; if you are using a concentrated rose essence or extract, use far less, as these can be much stronger than a distilled rose-water. The liquid also helps keep the almonds from oiling as they are pounded.
- The egg whitesTwo whites is often more liquid than this quantity of dry ingredients wants. Whisk them, then stir in a spoonful at a time and stop as soon as the paste coheres into a firm, rollable dough; a slack paste cannot be stamped.
- Rolling and stampingRoll thin, about 1/8 inch, between sheets of baking parchment rather than on a floured board, which dries the paste and cracks the edges. Chilling the rolled sheet for fifteen minutes makes the cutters release cleanly.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually read as somewhere around 325-350F/160-180C. Eight or nine minutes is right for thin shapes; take them out when the edges are just tinged with colour, as the sugar and almond oil catch quickly.
- Yield and keepingExpect three to four dozen small shapes. They crisp as they cool; the tin box in a dry place is sound advice, and they will hold a week or two if kept airtight away from steam.
Almond paste sweetmeats of this kind descend from the sugar-and-almond confectionery of the medieval and early modern banquet course, where blanched almonds pounded with sugar and rose-water were moulded, gilded and stamped into devices for the table. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the late nineteenth century, that tradition had shrunk to the pastry-cook's drawer of ready-made garnishes: thin baked shapes kept in a tin to be set around a cream, a jelly or a charlotte at the last moment. The rose-water is the oldest thing in the recipe, a survival from a period when floral distillates rather than vanilla carried the perfume of a sweet dish. The "probable cost, 8d" is characteristic of the book, which priced nearly every entry so that a household manager could judge a dish before making it.