Macaroons
Blanca and pound one pound of sweet almonds with a little rose water; whip the whites of seven eggs to a froth; add one pound sugar; beat some time. Add the almonds; mix well. Drop on buttered paper, sift sugar over them, and bake quickly.
A plain almond macaroon of the older sort — nuts, sugar, egg white, no flour and no coconut. The only real difficulty is that the original assumes a mortar and a wood oven.
- Do not overbake, whatever "quickly" suggestsDo not overbake. Bake at 325F for 18-22 minutes, until the tops are cracked and pale gold but the centres still give; at higher heat the sugar colours before the interior sets and the macaroons turn dry and hard. The original gives no temperature, and what "bake quickly" meant in a wood-fired oven cannot be pinned down.
- Blanching and pounding"Blanca" is evidently an error for "blanch": cover the almonds with boiling water for a minute and slip off the skins. A food processor replaces the mortar, but pulse rather than run it — the rose water the recipe calls for helps keep the almonds from oiling into paste, so add it a teaspoon at a time as you grind.
- Seven egg whitesEggs of the period were unstandardised and often smaller than a modern large egg. Use five or six modern large whites, about two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, and add the last only if the mixture is stiff enough to stand on the spoon. The batter should be thick and sticky, not pourable.
- SugarA pound is about 2 1/4 cups granulated. Superfine (caster) dissolves faster in the whites and gives a smoother top; the sugar sifted over before baking is best done with confectioners' sugar.
- Rose waterStill sold, but modern rose water varies enormously in strength. Start with a teaspoon or two in the whole batch; a heavy hand gives a soapy result.
- Buttered paperParchment needs no butter and releases better. If the macaroons stick anyway, brush the underside of the paper with a little water while still warm and they will lift cleanly.
- Rest before bakingNot in the original, but worth doing: leave the piped or dropped mounds 20-30 minutes at room temperature before they go in. The surface dries and cracks in the characteristic way instead of spreading.
- YieldAbout 40 to 45 macaroons at a rounded tablespoon each. They keep four or five days in a tin and are better on the second day, once the interior has softened.
The word comes through French macaron from Italian maccarone, and the confection is generally traced to Italian convent and court kitchens, where ground almonds, sugar and egg white made a small cake needing no flour — which is also why macaroons have long served at Passover. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled in 1879, the almond macaroon was a standard item in the American dessert repertoire, appearing plain with tea, crumbled into charlottes and trifles, or crushed as a lining for iced puddings. The recipe's assumption that a cook has a pound of sweet almonds and a mortar to pound them in is a fair marker of the household it was written for: almonds were imported, expensive, and the labour to reduce them was somebody else's.