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Chocolate Nougatines
1 cup of granulated sugar, 1/3 a cup of pure corn syrup, 1/3 a cup of honey (strained), Piece of paraffine size of a pea, 1/4 a cup of water, 1/4 a teaspoonful of salt, The whites of 2 eggs, beaten dry, 1 cup of almond or English walnut meats, chopped fine, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla, About 1/2 a pound of Baker's "Dot" Chocolate.
Put the sugar, pure corn syrup, honey, paraffine and water over the fire, stir occasionally and let boil to the hard ball degree, about 248 degree F. Add the salt to the eggs, before beating them, and gradually pour on part of the syrup, beating constantly meanwhile with the egg beater; return the rest of the syrup to the fire and let boil until it is brittle when tested in cold water, or to 290 degree F. Then turn this gradually onto the eggs, beating constantly meanwhile. Return the whole to the saucepan, set over the fire on an asbestos mat and beat constantly until it becomes crisp when tested in cold water. Pour into a buttered pan a little larger than an ordinary bread pan and set aside to become cold. When cold cut into pieces about an inch and a quarter long and three-eighths of an inch wide and thick. Coat these with "Dot" Chocolate.
A two-stage nougat: part of the syrup cooked to firm ball goes into the meringue, the rest to crack stage, then the whole mass is dried out over heat before being cut and enrobed. The temperatures are the recipe; a thermometer is not optional.
- The hinge: cook the finished mass until it tests crispAfter both additions of syrup, the batch is still soft. Beating it over low heat drives off enough moisture that a dab dropped in cold water shatters rather than bends. Stop too early and the nougatines stay chewy and will slump instead of holding a cut edge.
- The stated stages do not match modern names248F is firm ball by current tables, not hard ball, and 290F is soft crack rather than truly brittle. Trust the numbers over the names, and calibrate your thermometer in boiling water first.
- ParaffineFood-grade paraffin appears in a good deal of American candy and coating work of the period, for gloss and to discourage graining, and it passes through undigested. It is still sold for confectionery, but a pea of it is doing little that careful crystal control will not, and it can reasonably be omitted.
- Baker's "Dot" ChocolateA Walter Baker line, apparently a sweet chocolate used here for dipping; long discontinued. Use a dark couverture around 55-60 percent, properly tempered, or a compound coating if you would rather not temper.
- Asbestos matA heat diffuser sold for exactly this purpose. A modern flame tamer, or the lowest setting on an electric burner, gives the same gentle even heat without the asbestos.
- Beating"The egg beater" means a hand rotary beater held in one hand while pouring boiling syrup with the other. A stand mixer with the whisk is the sane substitute; pour the syrup down the side of the bowl in a thin stream.
- Pan and yieldAn ordinary bread pan of the period is roughly 9 by 5 inches; the recipe asks for something a little larger than that. Cut at the specified 1-1/4 by 3/8 inch and the batch gives a large number of small bars.
- WeatherNougat of this kind picks up moisture from the air and turns sticky. Work on a dry day, and store the finished pieces airtight once the chocolate has set.
Choice Recipes was one of the promotional booklets issued by Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, the long-established American chocolate firm; its recipes came largely from professional cooking-school writers of the day. Nougatine is the French confectioner's diminutive of nougat, the boiled-sugar and egg-white sweet generally traced to the almond-growing south of France and to Montelimar in particular, though the word is also used in France for a quite different caramel-and-almond brittle. What makes this version American is the corn syrup: commercial glucose became cheap and widely available in home kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, and candy recipes of the period lean on it heavily to keep boiled sugar from graining. The two-syrup method here, one addition at firm ball and one at crack, is one confectioner's technique for a nougat firm enough to cut into bars and dip.