Macaroons
INGREDIENTS. - lb. of sweet almonds, 1/21 lb. of sifted loaf sugar, the whites of 3 eggs, wafer paper. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Blanch, skin and dry the almonds and pound them well with a little orangeflower or plain water; then add the sifted sugar and the whites of the eggs, which should be beaten to a stiff froth; and mix MACKEREL. 232 MACKEREL, PICKLED. all the ingredients well together. When the paste looks soft, drop it at equal distances on to sheets MACAROONS. of wafer paper: put a strip of almond on the top of each; strew some syrup over and bake the macaroons in rather a slow oven, of a light brown colour. When hard and set, they are done. They must not be allowed to get very brown, as that would spoil their appearance.
TIME. From 15 to 20 minutes.
A very old-fashioned almond macaroon — no coconut, no flour, just almonds, sugar and egg white. The quantities in this printing have suffered; Beeton's macaroons are normally made with equal weights of almonds and sugar, about 1/2 lb (225 g) of each to three egg whites.
- Pounding the almondsBlanched almonds pounded in a mortar with a few drops of water give a coarse, slightly oily paste that is the whole character of the sweet. A food processor works, but pulse it and add the water as directed — run it too long and the almonds turn to butter and the batter weeps oil in the oven.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed; sifted, it is the equivalent of caster or superfine sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar is coarser and will give a gritty, spreading batter.
- Orange-flower waterA standard Victorian flavouring, still sold in Middle Eastern and baking shops. Use it sparingly — a teaspoon or two is enough to moisten the almonds and it turns soapy in quantity.
- "Rather a slow oven"Take that as 300–325°F (150–160°C). The point is to dry the macaroons through without colouring them beyond pale gold; the recipe's own test is that they are hard and set.
- Wafer paperThe thin edible starch sheet often sold as "rice paper", used for nougat and macaroons. It stops the sticky batter welding itself to the tin and is eaten with the biscuit; parchment does the same job but must be peeled off.
- "Strew some syrup over""syrup" is almost certainly a misprint for sugar strewn over the tops, which is what gives the crackled, frosted crust. A light dusting of caster sugar just before baking achieves it; poured syrup will simply run.
- YieldDropped in teaspoonfuls, a batch on this scale makes roughly 24 to 30 macaroons. They keep a week in a tin and soften if left out.
The almond macaroon is older than the coconut kind -- it belongs to a family of European almond-paste confections generally traced to Italian convent baking, and it appears in French and English recipe books by the seventeenth century. Beeton gives an "average cost" of tenpence, which is characteristic of her whole project: almonds were an expensive imported store-cupboard luxury, and costed recipes gave a housekeeper some check on her outlay.