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Almond Sticks
Roll Puff Paste one eighth inch thick. Brush with white of egg, sprinkle with shredded almonds and powdered sugar. Cut into strips one half inch wide and three inches long. Bake in a quick oven.
Four lines of instruction that assume you already have puff paste in the icebox and know what a quick oven feels like. The details below fill in what the original leaves unsaid.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The strips are thin and want a hot oven so the layers lift fast before the sugar and nuts scorch; 8 to 12 minutes should be enough, but watch them.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this period "powdered sugar" generally means a fine granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match and browns more evenly on top.
- Puff pasteThe book expects homemade rough or classic puff. A good all-butter frozen puff pastry, thawed in the refrigerator, behaves the same way; roll it to the specified one-eighth inch and no thinner.
- Shredded almondsThis means blanched almonds cut lengthwise into thin shreds, essentially what is now sold as slivered almonds. Chop them small enough that they sit flat, or they will tip off when the strips are lifted.
- Chill before bakingThe rolling, brushing and cutting warm the butter. Fifteen to twenty minutes in the refrigerator on the sheet pan before baking gives a much straighter rise and stops the strips from slumping.
- CuttingUse a long knife or a pastry wheel and press straight down rather than dragging, so the cut edges stay open and the layers separate. Space the strips about an inch apart; they widen as they puff.
- YieldNot stated in the original. A single sheet of puff, roughly 9 by 14 inches, gives something on the order of six to seven dozen sticks at the size specified, allowing for trim.
- Serving and keepingThe original says nothing about service; sticks of this kind were often eaten alongside ice cream, fruit or coffee. They soften within hours; crisp them for a few minutes in a hot oven if kept overnight.
Sticks of sugared puff paste are often said to have been a use for pastry trimmings in professional kitchens long before they reached American home cookbooks, and they belong to the same family as the French allumettes aux amandes and sacristains, whose names are traditionally traced to matchsticks and to twisted sexton's candles. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and like other manufacturer-sponsored books of the early 1900s it pairs its promotional chocolate recipes with a full course of conventional household cookery. A dessert section of that era leaned heavily on puff paste, which a competent cook was assumed to keep on hand and to stretch across tarts, patties and small dry accompaniments like these; the recipe's brevity is a sign of how routine the skill was expected to be.