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Almond Tartlets
Put two ounces of butter and two ounces of pounded sugar into a basin, and beat them together with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes smooth and creamy. Add four ounces of pounded almonds, one ounce of crushed rata-fias, and the beaten and strained yolks of two eggs. Whip a table-spoonful of cream to a stiff froth, and mix it thoroughly with all the other ingredients. Butter some patty-pans, line them with paste, put some of the mixture in each, and bake carefully in a moderately quick oven for twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, 1s.
A Victorian frangipane-style tartlet filling, closer to a rich almond cream than a modern frangipane since it carries no flour and only egg yolk. A few of the quantities and vessels need translating.
- Oven temperatureA "moderately quick" oven is about 375-400F (190-200C). Blind-baking is not mentioned, so the pastry cooks from raw under a wet filling; a metal tin and a preheated baking sheet under it help the bases set.
- TimingTwenty to thirty minutes suits deepish patty-pans, but shallow modern tartlet tins will be done in 15-20. The filling is ready when it is puffed, golden and just set at the centre; overbaked, an egg-yolk-and-almond cream turns dry and grainy.
- Patty-pansSmall round tins about 2-2.5 inches across, the ancestor of the modern bun or tartlet tray. Expect roughly 10-12 tartlets from these quantities.
- Pounded almondsBlanched sweet almonds worked in a mortar to a paste. Ground almonds from a packet are drier and finer; a short blitz of whole blanched almonds with a spoonful of the sugar comes closer to the intended oily texture.
- RatafiasSmall, hard almond macaroon biscuits, traditionally flavoured with bitter almond or apricot kernel. Amaretti are the nearest thing on sale now; crush them to coarse crumbs. An ounce is about 30g.
- "Pounded sugar"Loaf sugar broken down in a mortar, roughly the fineness of caster sugar. Use caster rather than icing sugar, which contains starch.
- Whipping one tablespoon of creamA single tablespoon is awkward to whip in a full-sized bowl. Whip 3-4 tablespoons of double cream to a soft peak and fold in a tablespoonful, or simply fold in the tablespoon unwhipped and accept a slightly denser filling.
- "Beaten and strained" yolksStraining removes the chalazae so the filling bakes smooth. Worth doing; it takes a moment through a fine sieve.
- The pasteThe book assumes a short or puff paste made in-house. A sweet shortcrust lined thinly and chilled before filling will hold up best against the moist almond mixture.
Almond tartlets belong to a long line of English almond pastries descending from medieval sweet almond-milk cookery and, more directly, from the French frangipane creams that are usually said to have entered English confectionery at some point in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. What dates this version is the ratafias: small almond macaroons named for the flavoured cordial, generally traced to the same bitter-almond and kernel flavouring that scented ratafia liqueur. Victorian cooks appear to have used the biscuits as a ready-made flavouring, crumbled into creams, trifles and tart fillings, which is why an ounce of them appears here alongside four ounces of fresh almonds. The "probable cost, 1s." is characteristic of Cassell's, which priced almost every dish for a middle-class household running to a budget; a shilling marks this as a modest but distinctly special-occasion sweet, almonds being an imported and not especially cheap store-cupboard item.