Creole Kisses
½ lb. Jordan almonds Whites 4 eggs 1/4 cup boiling water 1¼ cups powdered sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla ¼ teaspoon salt ½ cup sugar Blanch almonds, finely shred one-half of them, and dry slowly in oven. Put water and sugar in a saucepan, and as soon as boiling-point is reached, add remaining almonds, and cook until the syrup is of a golden brown color. Turn into a pan, cool, and finely pound in mortar. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, add gradually sugar, then vanilla, almonds, and salt. Shape, sprinkle with shredded almonds, sift sugar over them, and bake in a slow oven twenty-five minutes.
A meringue built on homemade almond praline: half the almonds are caramelized and pounded to a powder, the other half shredded for the tops. The success of the batch depends almost entirely on how dry the praline powder and the shredded almonds are before they meet the egg whites.
- Jordan almondsHere this means plain sweet almonds of the large Spanish Jordan type, not the sugar-shelled confection sold under that name today. Whole blanched almonds are the correct substitute.
- BlanchingCover the shelled almonds with boiling water for about a minute; the skins slip off between finger and thumb. Dry them thoroughly before shredding or caramelizing, or the praline will seize and the meringue will weep.
- "A slow oven"300F, and for a meringue of this kind 275F is safer. Twenty-five minutes at that heat sets and dries the outside without browning; if the tops color, the oven is too hot.
- The praline stageSugar and water taken to a golden brown is roughly 340-350F on a thermometer. Caramel goes from golden to acrid in seconds, so pull it early and pour it onto an oiled sheet or silicone mat rather than a bare pan.
- Pounding the pralineA mortar was the period tool; a food processor does it in bursts. Stop while it is still a dry powder. Run it too long and the almond oil releases, turning it into a paste that will deflate the whites.
- Folding inBeat the whites stiff, add the powdered sugar gradually to a glossy meringue, then fold the praline and salt in by hand. Beating the almond powder in with the mixer knocks the air out.
- QuantitiesThe printed page was checked: the vanilla is a half teaspoon and the salt a quarter teaspoon, as given here. The caramel is made from the ¼ cup boiling water with the ½ cup granulated sugar; the 1¼ cups powdered sugar is beaten into the whites.
- Shaping and yieldDrop or pipe walnut-sized mounds on parchment, well spaced. Expect roughly three dozen from four whites. Cool completely on the sheet; they crisp as they cool and turn sticky in humid air, so store airtight.
"Kisses" was a common nineteenth-century English name for a small baked meringue drop, often connected with the French baiser, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented, and cookbooks of the period list plain kisses, chocolate kisses, cocoanut kisses and almond kisses as a family. The Creole label points to New Orleans and to praline, the caramelized-almond confection that French settlers brought to Louisiana and that local cooks adapted, most famously by switching to pecans. This version keeps the almond, grinding the praline to a powder so that the burnt-sugar flavor runs through the whole meringue rather than sitting in it as nuggets.