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Meringues aux Amandes
(Meringues of Almonds.) Quarter of a pound of peeled, dried, and pounded almonds, mixed with a quarter of a pound of sugar as above.
A one-line variation that assumes you have just read the plain meringue recipe printed above it in the book. Everything hinges on knowing what "as above" means: a stiff meringue of whipped whites and sugar, into which the almond mixture is folded.
- The missing quantityNo egg white is given here because the preceding recipe supplies it; the 4 oz of almonds and 4 oz of sugar appear to be the addition rather than the whole formula. Read the base recipe before starting, since it alone gives the number of whites.
- WeightsA quarter of a pound is 4 oz, about 115 g, of each. As written, the weight appears to be of the almonds already peeled, dried and pounded.
- "Peeled, dried and pounded"Blanch the almonds, slip the skins, then dry them properly in a low oven before grinding, or the oil released by pounding turns the mixture to paste. Ready-ground almonds work, but bought almond flour is finer and drier than a pounded almond and gives a denser, less crumbly meringue.
- Grinding with sugarPound or pulse the almonds together with part of the sugar. The sugar absorbs the oil and keeps the nuts powdery rather than smearing into butter.
- FoldingFold the almond and sugar mixture into the beaten whites in two or three additions and stop as soon as it is combined. Almond meal is heavy and will knock the air out of a meringue quickly.
- OvenThe original gives no oven instruction at all. If you are working from a modern kitchen, these are dried rather than baked: a cool oven, 225-250F, for an hour and a half to two hours, then left in the switched-off oven to finish. Almond meringues brown faster than plain ones because of the nut oil, so watch the colour.
- YieldNo yield is stated. As a rough guide, this quantity gives about two dozen small meringues piped or spooned in walnut-sized mounds, or a dozen shells if sandwiched in pairs.
Meringue reached English kitchens as a French import and stayed marked as French in the naming, which is why a book of this kind keeps aux amandes rather than calling it an almond meringue. The almond version sits on the border between meringue and macaroon: both are sugar, egg white and, in the second case, ground almonds, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery writers moved fairly freely between the two names. Almonds arrived at the Victorian kitchen whole and skin-on, so the labour of blanching, drying and pounding was routine confectioner's work; the instruction to dry them before pounding suggests a writer alert to the risk of a batch turning oily. The terse cross-reference style here, a variation given in a single sentence, is typical of professional recipe collections written for cooks who already knew the base method by heart.