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Almond Cheese Cakes
Beat up together very light one-half pound powdered sugar, and the whites of four eggs.
Blanch and cut in small pieces four ounces of almonds, which must be beaten up with the eggs and sugar. Add a little oil of almonds or rose water, and bake with pastry, in tins.--Mrs. I. H.
Almond Cheese Cakes.
Soak one-half pound Jordan almonds in cold water all night. Next morning, blanch them in cold water, lay them on a clean cloth to dry, and then beat them fine in a marble mortar with a little orange-flower or rose water. Then beat and strain six yolks and two whites of eggs, add a half-pound white sugar, and a little powdered mace. Rub all well together in the mortar. Melt ten ounces fresh butter, and add a grated lemon peel. Mix all the ingredients and fill the pans, after putting a paste at the bottom. Small-tin shapes are best for cheese cakes.
Two separate fillings for almond tartlets run together in one entry: a light meringue-style version from Mrs. I. H., and a longer, richer custard below it. Both are baked in small pastry-lined tins, and neither contains cheese.
- "Cheese cakes" without cheeseBy this period the name was often used for a small filled pastry of this type, the link to its origin in curd tarts having loosened (though curd versions were still made). Expect a dense almond custard in the second version and something closer to a chewy macaroon filling in the first.
- Oil of almondsIn a flavouring role this normally meant oil of bitter almonds, which in unrectified form carried hydrocyanic acid and was dosed by the drop. Use modern almond extract, the rectified or synthetic equivalent, and use it sparingly: a quarter teaspoon for this quantity.
- Jordan almondsThese are the long, sweet Málaga-type almonds sold for the table, not the sugar-shelled confection the name now suggests. Whole blanched almonds are the right substitute.
- BlanchingThe instruction to blanch in cold water is loose usage for soaking and slipping the skins. Overnight soaking softens the skins enough that they push off by hand; a brief hot-water dip does the same in a minute.
- The mortar, and why it mattersAlmonds pounded with rose or orange-flower water stay a smooth paste; ground dry in a food processor they heat, release oil and turn to butter. If you use a machine, pulse the nuts with a spoonful of the sugar or egg white and stop while the texture is still gritty.
- Quantities and yieldThe second filling is half a pound of sugar, half a pound of almonds, ten ounces of butter, and six yolks with two whites. That should fill roughly two dozen shallow tartlet tins about 2 1/2 inches across; the first, lighter mixture perhaps a dozen.
- Oven and timingNeither version gives a heat. Bake at 350F until the pastry is set and the filling is puffed and lightly coloured, about 20 to 25 minutes for small tins. The butter-rich filling will sink slightly as it cools, which is expected.
- Pastry"A paste at the bottom" means the tins are lined, not blind-baked. A short crust holds up better than puff against these wet fillings; chill the lined tins before filling.
- FlavouringsMace, grated lemon peel and orange-flower water were common flavourings for almond pastry in this period. Orange-flower water in particular is potent by modern palates: a teaspoon in the whole batch is plenty.
Almond cheesecakes descend from the English curd tarts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which the "cheese" was fresh curd beaten with eggs, butter, sugar and spice. As sugar and imported almonds became cheaper, cooks began substituting pounded almonds for the curd entirely, and by the era of Hannah Glasse and Elizabeth Raffald a recipe headed "cheesecakes" was as likely to be almond or lemon as it was to contain any dairy curd at all. The two versions here, printed one after the other in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers), show that inheritance intact: the marble mortar, the Jordan almonds, the orange-flower water and the mace are all eighteenth-century English kitchen vocabulary, carried into a postbellum Southern household book largely unchanged.