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Almond Paste for Moulding
1/2 lb. pulverized sugar. 3 tablespoons brandy. 1/2 lb. ground almonds. 1 tablespoon strained lemon juice.
Put all in stewpan over the fire and stir constantly seven or eight minutes; mold while hot. Can be colored before cooking if desired. Line molds for cream with this paste.
This is cooked marzipan, made without egg white, intended as a lining or a modelling paste rather than a candy to eat out of hand. It comes together fast and the only real risk is scorching.
- Pulverized sugarIn this period the term means sugar ground finer than granulated; how much finer varied by supplier. Modern superfine (caster) or confectioners' sugar will both serve; confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and gives a slightly drier, more matte paste.
- Ground almondsHalf a pound is about 2 cups of blanched almond flour or meal. Use blanched (skinless) almonds if you want a pale paste that takes color; unblanched meal gives a speckled brown.
- Stewpan and heatA stewpan is simply a heavy saucepan. Keep the heat low to moderate and the spoon moving the whole seven or eight minutes: with only four tablespoons of liquid to a pound of sugar and almonds the mixture is stiff, and it will catch on the bottom and taste burnt if left.
- What the cooking is forThe heat drives off most of the brandy and dissolves the sugar so the paste sets firm and holds a mold. Undercooked, it stays sticky and slumps; overcooked, the almond oil separates and the mass turns greasy and crumbly.
- Mold while hotThis is the hinge. Once it cools it stiffens and cracks rather than stretching. Turn it onto a surface dusted with confectioners' sugar, knead briefly with sugared hands, and press it into place while it is still warm enough to be pliable.
- ColoringAdd color before cooking, as instructed, so it distributes evenly. Modern gel or paste colors are stronger than the old liquid vegetable colors, so use a fraction of a drop.
- "Line molds for cream"The paste would be pressed in a thin sheet into a mold that was then filled with a cream, the marzipan acting as an edible shell; the recipe does not say which mold or which cream. It also takes impressions well for molded fruits and figures.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 lb of paste. Wrapped airtight it keeps for some weeks at cool room temperature, longer refrigerated.
Almond paste of this kind — marzipan — is one of the oldest sugar confections in European cookery, generally traced to the Arab world and reaching Western kitchens through Sicily and Spain, with Lübeck and Toledo later claiming it as their own. Its usefulness to a confectioner lies in the fact that ground almonds and sugar make a dough that can be rolled, tinted and impressed like clay, which is why nineteenth-century pastry books are full of molded marzipan fruits, hams and vegetables. Mary A. Wilson published this book around 1920, and a lining paste for cream molds is a glimpse of the ornamental confectionery still expected of an ambitious home cook at the time. There is no raw egg white here as a binder; cooking the sugar instead produces a paste that keeps well and sets firm enough to stand as a shell.