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Common Macaroons
12 ounces of almonds. 8 ounces of granulated sugar. 4 ounces of flour. 4 eggs. Pinch of salt.
Crush the almonds without taking off the skins, with a rolling-pin upon the table. Mix them and the sugar and flour together in a bowl. Drop the eggs in the middle and mix the whole into a rather soft dough. Place in lumps size of cherries on baking pans very slightly greased. Bake in a slack oven light brown. A few bitter almonds or peach kernels mixed in improves them.
A plain almond drop cookie of the sort a working bakeshop turned out by the sheet — but the final sentence puts it out of reach as written.
- The bitter almonds and peach kernelsBitter almonds and peach, apricot and cherry kernels contain amygdalin, which the body converts to hydrogen cyanide. The recipe gives no measured quantity, and that is the problem: "a few" is unquantified and the amygdalin content of kernels varies widely, so the dose cannot be known. Baking may drive off some hydrogen cyanide but cannot be relied on to make an unmeasured quantity safe, least of all at the low temperature called for here. Raw, unprocessed bitter almonds are not sold for food use in the United States. Use a current macaroon recipe instead.
- Why the book asks for themThe bitter kernel was the period's source of the marzipan note now supplied by almond extract, which is benzaldehyde without the cyanide. That flavour is what the line is reaching for.
- "Slack oven"A cool oven; period sources are usually read as somewhere around 250-325F. Slack, slow and cool were not used consistently from book to book, and no temperature is given here. The point is to dry and set the cookie rather than colour it quickly.
- Unblanched almondsThe skins are left on, which gives a speckled, brownish crumb. Confectioners' macaroons were generally made with blanched almonds and no flour, so the unblanched nuts here fit the plainer version.
- EggsEgg sizes were not standardised as they are now, so judge by the dough rather than the count: it should be soft enough to drop from a spoon but hold a mound. Add the last egg gradually.
- YieldCherry-sized lumps from this quantity give roughly four to five dozen small cookies, spread about an inch apart.
Macaroons reached the American bakeshop by way of Italy and France, where maccherone and macaron are generally traced to Italian, though the underlying root is disputed — a word for crushing or bruising is cited as often as one for a paste or fine dough — the almond paste being the point, not the coconut that later took over the name in the United States. The flour may suggest a trade recipe rather than a household one: a confectioner's macaroon is almond, sugar and egg white alone, while four ounces of flour and whole eggs make a cheaper, sturdier cookie that keeps its shape on a lightly greased pan. The instruction to crush the almonds with a rolling pin on the table, skins and all, belongs to the same economy — no blanching, no sieving, no nut mill. The closing suggestion of bitter almonds or peach kernels reflects a period in which flavouring was extracted at the bench from whatever kernel was cheapest, well before the hazard of those kernels was regulated.