Nuts
Almond Macaroons--No. 1 3 egg whites 1 cup powdered sugar 1/2 pound almond paste Rub the sugar and paste together, then add the beaten whites. This may be put on oiled paper with a pastry bag and tube, or may be dropped in small bits from the tip of a spoon. Bake fifteen to twenty minutes in a cool oven. When done, invert the paper and wet with a cloth wrung out of cold water. The macaroons will then easily peel off. Before baking, the macaroons may be sprinkled with almonds which have been blanched and shredded or chopped. Almond Macaroons--No. 2 1 egg white 1/3 cup granulated sugar 3 ounces finely chopped or ground almonds (first blanched and dried) Beat the egg white. Gradually beat in the sugar, and beat till very stiff. Add the chopped almonds. Put on oiled paper and bake as in preceding recipe.
Two versions of the same cookie: one built on bought almond paste, one on ground almonds and meringue. Both are forgiving as long as the oven stays low.
- "A cool oven"In the old heat scale, below a slow oven: somewhere in the region of 250-300F. Macaroons should dry and set with only a hint of colour; anything hotter cracks the tops and browns the almonds before the centres are cooked. Fifteen to twenty minutes suits small drops at that sort of heat.
- The steam trickInverting the baked sheet and wetting the back of the paper is the hinge of No. 1. The steam loosens the sugar that has bonded to the paper. Parchment or a silicone mat removes the need for it entirely, though the method still works if you use plain paper.
- Almond pastePeriod almond paste was blanched ground almonds worked with sugar, stiff and generally unflavoured; proportions varied, often somewhere between equal parts and two parts nuts to one of sugar. Modern canned or tubed almond paste is close; marzipan is not, being much sweeter and softer, and will spread badly.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this date this generally means a finely pulverised sugar; the nearest thing on a modern shelf is confectioners' sugar, now sold with a little cornstarch in it, which does no harm here.
- Working the pasteRub sugar and paste together until no lumps remain before any egg white goes in. Lumps will not disperse once the mixture is slack, and they bake into hard spots.
- Egg whites in No. 1Three whites to half a pound of paste gives a piping consistency. Add them in two or three additions and stop when the batter holds a ribbon; whites vary in size and the full amount may be more than you need.
- Blanching almonds for No. 2Pour boiling water over shelled almonds, stand a minute, slip the skins off, then dry them thoroughly in a low oven. Damp almonds turn the meringue to paste. Store-bought blanched almonds, ground fine, save the step.
- Resting before bakingNot in the recipe, but modern practice is to let piped macaroons stand at room temperature until the surface forms a dry skin, twenty to thirty minutes, which tends to give a smoother top rather than a spread puddle.
- YieldNeither recipe says. No. 1 makes roughly three dozen small macaroons; No. 2, being a single white, makes about a dozen and a half.
Almond macaroons are the older branch of the macaroon family, made long before shredded coconut displaced almonds in American home baking. The formula is minimal by design: ground almonds, sugar and egg white, with no flour and no chemical leavening -- which is why it turns up in professional and confectioners' work in Italy and France (convent origins are often claimed, though the story is more tradition than record) and why it suits the flourless Passover table. That two versions appear here, one starting from purchased almond paste and one from whole nuts, fits a period when almond paste could be bought by the pound from grocers and confectioners while a cook might still prefer to blanch and pound her own. The instruction to steam the paper off belongs to a kitchen without parchment, where the baker needed a way to part sugar from plain oiled paper without breaking the cookie.