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Frangipane Cream
Mix two tablespoons flour, one fourth cup powdered sugar, and one fourth cup cream until smooth. Cook ten minutes, stirring constantly; add four egg yolks, one tablespoon each of sherry, lemon juice, lemon rind, and chopped citron. Cook in double boiler until mixture thickens.
A rich pastry cream in the older French manner, meant as a filling for tarts, cream puffs or layer cakes rather than a dessert eaten on its own. The quantities as printed are unusually stiff, so read the whole thing before you start.
- The liquid is genuinely shortTwo tablespoons of flour to a quarter cup of cream gives a paste, not a cream, and it risks scorching over ten minutes of cooking. Whether more scalded milk or cream was assumed is not stated in the text; either way, the quantity as printed is better treated as an omission than as a measurement to follow literally.
- Use the double boiler throughoutThe recipe only calls for it at the end, but a flour-and-cream base this thick will catch on direct heat within a minute. Set it over simmering water from the start and stir continuously.
- Powdered sugarIn 1907 this generally meant finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match; modern confectioners' sugar will add a second thickener you do not need.
- Temper the yolksFour yolks going into a hot flour base will scramble if added straight. Whisk a few spoonfuls of the hot mixture into the yolks first, then return the lot to the pan.
- Know when it is doneEgg-thickened creams generally set somewhere around 170 to 180F, and much past that the yolks curdle and the cream goes grainy, which the flour will not hide. Pull it as soon as it coats the spoon heavily.
- Lemon rindA tablespoon of grated rind is roughly the zest of one to two lemons. Take only the yellow; the white pith turns the cream bitter.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold at the holidays alongside glace fruit. Candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute. Chop it finely or it sinks.
- YieldRoughly a cup as written, enough to fill a small tart shell or a few cream puffs. Press plastic wrap or buttered paper on the surface while it cools to stop a skin forming.
The name is traditionally traced to the Frangipani family of Rome, one of whom is said to have popularised an almond-scented glove perfume in sixteenth-century Paris, with pastry cooks later borrowing the scent's name for an almond-enriched filling. What survives in some English and American cookbooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this one included, is the custard rather than the almonds: a flour-stabilised pastry cream flavoured with wine, citrus and candied peel. Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it padded its promotional chocolate recipes with a full working repertoire of standard confectionery. A frangipane cream belonged in that repertoire as a base filling a cook was expected to know, which may explain why the instructions here are so clipped.