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Macaroon Tartlets
3 eggs (whites) 2 ounces castor sugar 2 ounces ground almonds Pinch of salt.
Line 10 patty pans with short crust.
Whip whites to a stiff froth, add castor sugar and almonds gradually. Fill prepared patty pans with mixture. about 15 minutes.
A meringue-and-almond filling baked in small pastry shells. The original gives neither an oven temperature nor a full method for the crust, so a few gaps need filling before you start.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, only "about 15 minutes." A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a short crust with a meringue filling: the pastry sets and the top colours lightly in that time. Much hotter and the almond meringue is likely to brown and weep before the crust cooks through.
- Patty pansThese are shallow individual tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 2½ inches across, not muffin cups. A standard 12-cup mini-muffin or tartlet tray stands in; use ten cups and leave two empty.
- Castor sugarCaster sugar is superfine granulated, still sold under that name in the UK; in Canada it is more often labelled fruit or berry sugar. Ordinary granulated works if you pulse it briefly in a grinder, since coarse crystals dissolve poorly in whipped whites.
- Weights, not cupsTwo ounces of caster sugar is a scant 1/3 cup; two ounces of ground almonds is a generous 1/2 cup, loosely packed. Ground almonds means almond flour or meal, not marzipan or almond paste.
- The hinge: fold, do not beatThe instruction to add sugar and almonds "gradually" matters. Beat the sugar in a spoonful at a time to a stiff glossy meringue, then fold the almonds through by hand. Stirring the almond fat into a beaten meringue collapses it and the filling bakes flat and greasy.
- A lean mixtureThree whites to only 2 oz sugar is much less sugar than a modern macaroon or meringue. Expect a soft, faintly sweet almond filling rather than a chewy sweet one, and don't be surprised that it does not crisp.
- Blind bakingFifteen minutes in a moderate oven is short for raw short crust under a wet filling. Chill the lined tins well and prick the bases, or bake the shells five minutes empty before filling, and the bottoms will not be pale and soggy.
- YieldTen small tartlets, best eaten the day they are made; the meringue softens against the pastry overnight.
The Five Roses Cook Book was a flour-company book, issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote Five Roses flour to Canadian households. A tartlet like this one shows how a "macaroon" was understood before the word narrowed: the name comes through French from Italian maccarone, and for centuries it meant simply a confection of ground almonds bound with beaten egg white and sugar, whether piped as small cakes or spooned into pastry as it is here. The recipe's telegraphic last line, "about 15 minutes" with no temperature, is characteristic of books written for cooks with wood or coal ranges, whose ovens had no dial to set.