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GENOISES GLACE (a l'Italienne)
Mix well together five ounces of castor sugar and five eggs; add a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds pounded, and the same quantity of flour. Butter a baking-sheet, roll the paste to the thickness of a crown piece, lay it on the sheet, and bake to a good colour in a quick oven. When done, cut it any desired shapes. Clarify a pound of sugar (see SUGAR, CLARIFIED), put the pan into cold water, and mix thoroughly with the sugar the whites of five eggs previously well whisked. Glaze the tops of the genoises with this, and set them to dry for a quarter of an hour in a cool oven. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A flat almond sponge baked in a sheet, cut into shapes and glazed with a boiled-sugar royal icing. The Victorian text assumes you already know two things it does not say: how to whisk the eggs, and how to clarify sugar.
- The hinge: whisk the eggs and sugar properlyFive eggs and 5 oz sugar must be beaten to a thick, pale ribbon that holds a trail before the almonds and flour go in — this is the only leavening in the cake. Fold the dry ingredients in by hand; beating them in knocks the air out and gives a hard, biscuit-like slab.
- Castor sugarBritish castor (caster) sugar is superfine granulated. American granulated works, but pulse it briefly in a food processor if you want it to dissolve as fast in the eggs.
- Sweet almonds, poundedBlanched almonds ground fine — 4 oz, about 1 cup of ground almonds. "Sweet" is the ordinary edible almond, distinguished in old books from bitter almonds, which are not used whole and are not what is wanted here.
- "Thickness of a crown piece"The Victorian crown was a thick coin, roughly an eighth of an inch. Spread rather than roll: this batter is soft, and a palette knife over a buttered, paper-lined sheet is the practical method.
- Quick ovenThe book gives no temperatures; a 'quick' oven is usually equated with about 400-425F. At that heat a sheet this thin colours in 8-12 minutes, so watch it from six minutes on. Cut the shapes while the sheet is still warm — it shatters once cold.
- Clarified sugar and the glazeClarified sugar is sugar boiled with water and skimmed clear (Cassell's cross-references its own entry). Cooling the pan in cold water before adding the whisked whites stops the syrup cooking them into scrambled threads; the result is a pourable royal icing rather than a meringue.
- Cool oven for dryingAround 200-250F, door slightly ajar, for the quarter of an hour the recipe gives — enough to set the surface without colouring it. The icing is never brought to a temperature that would pasteurise the whites, so use pasteurised egg white if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- YieldA standard half-sheet pan gives roughly 30 to 40 small cakes cut in diamonds or rounds. A pound of sugar makes far more glaze than they need; halve it unless you are icing two batches.
Génoise is named for Genoa, and the whole-egg foam sponge it describes reached French pastry from Italian practice — the connection is traditional rather than documented in any single source, but the name and the "à l'Italienne" tag in this title both point the same way. What Cassell's gives here is not the tall layer génoise of later cookbooks but the older sheet form: baked thin, cut into shapes, glazed and dried. The boiled-sugar icing and the two ovens at different heats belong to the confectioner's workshop rather than the family kitchen. The entry closes, as Cassell's entries habitually do, with a costing — 1s 6d.