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Lady Abbess' Puffs
Blanch six ounces of Jordan almonds. Throw them into cold water as they are done, and afterwards wipe them dry and pound them in a mortar, adding a few drops of rose or orange-flower water every now and then to prevent them oiling. Mix with them a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted loaf sugar and half an ounce of fresh butter. Pound to a smooth paste. Spread this evenly and thinly on small buttered patty-pans, and bake in a very slow oven until the puffs are crisp. Before serving, put a little jam into each, and cover it with whipped cream. The puffs should be cold before the jam is put into them. Time to bake, an hour or more. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for a dozen and a half puffs.
This is a meringue-less almond wafer — really a thin marzipan dried in a cool oven until brittle, then filled at the last minute. Two things decide whether it works: keeping the almonds from turning oily, and treating the oven as a dryer rather than a baker.
- Jordan almondsThese are large, flat, sweet almonds of the Spanish type, not the sugar-shelled wedding candy the name now means. Whole blanched almonds, 6 oz (170 g), are the right substitute.
- Don't let them oilThe rose or orange-flower water is there to keep the almonds from releasing their oil under pounding. In a food processor, pulse in short bursts, stop while the paste is still slightly grainy, and add the flower water a few drops at a time, as the recipe directs; if you are using a concentrated essence rather than a distilled flower water, use it far more sparingly.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was cut from a cone and crushed; "finely sifted" gives you something between caster and confectioners' sugar. A quarter pound is 4 oz (about 115 g); superfine sugar works, and icing sugar makes a smoother paste.
- A very slow oven250–275F (120–135C), with the door propped slightly if your oven runs tight. The hour or more in the original is realistic for drying, not browning — the puffs should stay pale and turn crisp all the way through.
- Patty-pansSmall shallow tartlet tins, or a mini-muffin tray. Butter them well and spread the paste thin, no more than about 1/8 inch, pressed up the sides to form a shallow cup that will later hold the jam.
- Cooling and unmouldingLet them cool in the tins until completely firm; warm almond paste sags and tears. Ease them out with the tip of a knife — they are brittle once dry, and a few will break.
- Fill at the last momentThe instruction to cool before adding jam is not fussiness: any moisture softens the shells within the hour. Add jam and whipped cream just before they go to the table.
- YieldEighteen small puffs, as stated. The 8d costing reflects late-nineteenth-century prices for almonds and sugar and has no modern equivalent.
Cassell's places this among its almond confections, a family descended from medieval marchpane — sugar and pounded almonds worked to a paste, the standby of the still-room long before butter cakes took over the sweet course. The name may point to the convent kitchen: religious houses in Spain, Portugal and Italy were, and in places still are, celebrated for almond and sugar sweetmeats, and English cookery books of the period attached names such as abbess, prioress or 'nun's cake' to rich almond mixtures, though the attribution here is decorative rather than documented. The finish — jam and whipped cream added at the last minute — fits the late-Victorian habit of serving tiny composed sweets at the end of dinner, assembled in the pantry shortly before they were carried in.