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Almond Cookies
Clove } 1/2 tablespoon. Grated rind 1/2 lemon. 2 tablespoons brandy. 1/2 cup butter 1 egg ⅓ cup almonds, blanched and finely chopped ½ cup sugar 2 cups flour ½ tablespoon cinnamon
This entry is printed as a bare ingredient list, as many were in the Boston Cooking-School book when the method matched a neighboring recipe. The proportions are those of a rolled butter cookie, and that is how it should be handled.
- The missing methodCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the egg, then work in the flour, cinnamon and almonds to a stiff dough. Chill it, roll thin, cut, and bake.
- OvenBake at 350-375F. Thin rolled cookies of this kind take 8-10 minutes; they set as they cool, so pull them when the edges color.
- That cinnamon quantityOne and a half tablespoons of cinnamon in two cups of flour is very aggressive and may well be a compositor's error for teaspoons. Taste the raw dough and judge; 1-2 teaspoons gives a spiced cookie rather than a cinnamon-dominated one.
- No leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here, and none is wanted. These are short, crisp, shortbread-textured cookies, and they will not spread or rise much, so cut them close together.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, let them stand a minute, and slip off the skins. Modern blanched slivered almonds work; chop them fine, since large pieces tear thin dough when you roll it.
- Handling the doughWith a half cup of butter to two cups of flour the dough is dry and crumbly at first. Press it together rather than adding liquid, and chill it at least an hour before rolling to keep it from cracking.
- YieldSeveral dozen cookies at a two-inch cutter, rolled an eighth of an inch thick.
Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (first published 1896) gives cookies among its small, keepable baked goods made from stiff doughs rolled and cut on the board, distinct from the softer drop cakes. Cookies of this sort came into American kitchens largely through northern European baking traditions, the word itself generally traced to the Dutch koekje, "little cake," and almond-and-cinnamon versions have close relatives in German and Scandinavian Christmas baking. That the recipe calls for almonds "blanched and finely chopped" is a reminder that nuts often arrived in the household as whole kernels in the shell or skin, with blanching, chopping and pounding done in the kitchen. The extreme brevity here suggests a method given in full elsewhere, with the variation printed as little more than a list of proportions.