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Almond Gum Paste
An eatable sort, and semi-transparent: 1 ounce of gum tragacanth--allow more for waste. 1 pound of fine powdered sugar. 4 ounces of the paste of pounded almonds. 8 ounces of corn starch. Blanch the almonds, pound them to a fine paste and pass it through a seive. Make the gum paste as directed in the preceding article and add the almond paste to it after the sugar and before the starch. This is suitable to make small cornucopia or horns of plenty, and other objects to be ornamented with fine icing for a finish.
This is pastillage — a modelling paste for showpieces, not a dough for eating in quantity. The proportions work, but almost everything about the handling has to be inferred from the era's practice.
- The missing first stepThe "preceding article" it refers to is the plain gum paste. Period gum-paste directions have the tragacanth soaked in water for a day or so until it swells into a clear mucilage, then rubbed through a cloth or fine sieve before any sugar goes in; the amount of water varies from recipe to recipe. Without that soak the gum will not hydrate and the paste will be gritty.
- Gum tragacanthStill sold, usually as powder in Middle Eastern groceries or cake-decorating suppliers, and it is what gives pastillage its stretch and its glassy dried edge. Modern decorators commonly use CMC/tylose powder instead, at a fraction of the weight; it behaves differently and may not give the semi-transparency the recipe advertises.
- "Fine powdered sugar"In nineteenth-century usage this is sugar ground fine, not necessarily the anti-caking cornstarch blend sold today. Since the recipe adds its own 8 ounces of cornstarch, ordinary confectioners' sugar is close enough — sift it, as lumps will not dissolve in a paste this dry.
- Almond paste means almondsFour ounces of blanched almonds pounded to a paste and sieved, with no sugar and no syrup. Commercial almond paste or marzipan is roughly half sugar and will throw the balance; grind your own, or expect a softer, slower-drying paste.
- Order mattersAdd the almonds after the sugar and before the starch, as written. The oil in the nuts shortens the paste, and the cornstarch is what brings it back to a workable, non-sticky consistency at the end.
- Working the pasteKeep everything but the piece in your hands covered with a damp cloth or plastic; the surface skins over within minutes. Roll thin on a starch-dusted board, cut, and shape at once.
- Drying the cornucopiasWrap the rolled paste around a greased metal or foil cone and leave it in a dry, warm, draught-free place for 24 to 48 hours until rigid before icing. Damp kitchens are the enemy — pastillage that has absorbed moisture will slump and never harden properly.
- Yield and eatingThe dry ingredients come to about 1 lb 13 oz, plus whatever water the gum takes up in soaking — enough for a dozen or more small horns. It is technically edible, as the recipe's opening line insists, but it dries to something like a hard biscuit; these were centrepieces first and dessert second.
Gum paste — pastillage to the French — was one of the standard skills of the nineteenth-century pastry department, used for the cornucopias, baskets, vases and temple fronts that crowned a banquet buffet and were expected to be looked at rather than finished off. The gum comes from tragacanth, a sap tapped from *Astragalus* shrubs in Iran and Turkey, imported in pale flakes and sold by the ounce; it was a confectioner's staple long before it became a food-industry stabiliser. The almond version here is the richer variant: the nut oil makes the paste more pliable, and the recipe itself advertises it as semi-transparent and directs it toward pieces that will be picked out with fine icing.