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Marguerites
Cut a sheet of sponge cake into small rounds, dip in confectioner's chocolate.
While this is still moist lay split blanched almonds cut in halves around each little cake like the petals of the daisy. Into the center drop the daisy heart, made of fondant colored yellow. For a change you may use white fondant and split almonds which have been delicately browned in the oven, making the marguerite heart of chocolate. See Page * Make strong beef broth the day before macaroni is to be served. Let it stand over night. In the morning it should be like a stiff jelly. Lift off the cake of cold fat from the top. Put one-half pound of macaroni into a large pan, over it pour absolutely boiling water, enough to cover it-to swim it. Let it boil continuously for half an hour. Into the broth put one can of strained tomatoes (so as to remove the seeds), two onions, one teaspoon of ground cloves, one teaspoon of ground allspice, one-half teaspoon of ground mace, three bay leaves, six dried mushrooms. Boil all this until it is a thick paste. Then pour the cooked and drained macaroni into a large hot plate.
Two unrelated texts have run together here: a small petit-four decorated to look like a daisy, and the tail end of a macaroni-in-beef-broth recipe that belongs elsewhere in the book. The notes below treat each in turn.
- Confectioner's chocolateThis means a tempered coating chocolate rather than the cocoa-heavy baking blocks sold today. Use couverture tempered properly, or a compound coating chocolate if you would rather not temper; either sets with the gloss and snap the recipe assumes.
- The hinge: work while it is moistThe almond petals hold only because they are pressed into wet chocolate. Dip and decorate three or four cakes at a time rather than dipping the whole tray first, and keep the fondant hearts ready in a piping bag or rolled into small pellets before you start.
- FondantPoured fondant, not the rolled sugar paste sold for covering cakes. A stiff commercial rolled fondant will not settle into a round daisy centre; thin poured fondant, or a thick royal icing, behaves as intended.
- Blanched almonds, splitWhole blanched almonds split lengthwise along their natural seam give two flat halves with a rounded tip, which is what makes them read as petals. Sliced or slivered almonds do not. Warm almonds split more cleanly than cold ones.
- Browning the almondsFor the white-fondant version, toast the split almonds at 350F for six to eight minutes, watching them from five minutes on. They should be pale gold; anything darker looks scorched against white fondant.
- YieldAn 8-inch square sponge cut with a 1 1/4-inch cutter gives roughly two to three dozen rounds, depending on how closely you cut. Cut the sponge a day old, or chilled, so the crumb does not tear under the cutter.
- The stray macaroni textThe passage beginning "Make strong beef broth" is a printing run-on from another recipe and has no bearing on the marguerites. Its instruction to boil macaroni half an hour reflects the coarse dried pasta of the period; modern dried macaroni is done in eight to ten minutes.
- Dried mushrooms and jellied stockIn that same passage, the six dried mushrooms were most likely soaked before use, though the long boiling would also rehydrate them; the broth setting to a stiff jelly overnight simply indicates a gelatin-rich stock made from bones. Neither point applies to the cakes.
Marguerite is French for the daisy, and the name attaches to a family of turn-of-the-century confections built to look like one: a pale round centre ringed with white petals. Daisy motifs were popular in late-Victorian and Edwardian decoration, and confectioners used them for petits fours, iced biscuits and bonbons. The recipe treats plain sponge cake as raw material rather than a finished dish — cut down, dipped and dressed up. Confusingly, the same word was used in period cookery for an entirely different item, a savoury cheese-and-nut mixture spread on crackers and browned, which appears under the same heading in other books of the era.<br><br>The macaroni passage at the end appears to be a run-on from another recipe or page rather than part of the marguerites; the cause cannot be established from the text.