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Almond Rock Cakes
3/4 pound chopped almonds 1 pound powdered sugar Pinch of salt Whites of 5 eggs Add the salt to the eggs and beat as stiff as possible. Add the sugar gradually, then the almonds. Drop from a teaspoon on buttered tins and bake in a slow oven until delicately browned.
A meringue-based almond drop, closer to a macaroon than to the British scone-like rock cake. The proportions are large by modern standards and the sugar term needs translating.
- "Powdered sugar"In American books of this period the phrase usually means finely granulated or caster sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine sugar dissolves cleanly into the whites; modern powdered sugar will give a softer, chalkier cake.
- Slow ovenSomewhere in the 250-325F range that the term covers; around 300F is a reasonable reading. These are meringues with almonds in them: bake until dried through and, as the recipe says, delicately browned. Timing for teaspoon-sized drops will vary with the oven.
- The hinge: beat the whites properlyWith a pound of sugar going into five whites, the foam has to be stiff before any sugar goes in, and the sugar added a spoonful at a time. Dumped in at once it deflates the whites and the batter spreads into flat sheets.
- ScaleA pound of sugar, three-quarters of a pound of almonds and five whites yields something like five to six dozen small cakes. Halving the recipe works without adjustment.
- The almondsChopped almonds, not ground almond flour; the texture of the finished cake depends on distinct fragments. The recipe does not say whether to blanch them. Chop them fairly fine or the drops will not hold together at the edges.
- Buttered tinsMeringue batters stick tenaciously to buttered metal. Parchment on a heavy sheet is the practical substitute, and lets the cakes lift off whole once cooled.
- Folding inFold the almonds through with a spatula rather than beating them in. Any vigorous mixing at this stage collapses what the earlier beating achieved.
- Cooling and keepingLet them cool completely on the sheet before moving; they firm as they cool. Stored airtight they keep about a week, but they go soft quickly in a humid kitchen.
Loose-leaf cook books were a small publishing fashion in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s: the pages were punched and bound in a ring or post binder so a household could add clippings, cards and its own handwriting alongside the printed receipts. The name "rock cake" is generally traced to the rough, craggy surface of a dropped rather than moulded batter, and in Britain it attaches to a stiff, fruited, scone-like bun; here the same name has been borrowed for something quite different, a stiff almond meringue in the macaroon family. Egg whites accumulated in kitchens that used the yolks for custards, ice creams and boiled dressings, and recipes calling for whites in quantity were one way of using them.