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Nougatine Drops
Drop French Nougat mixture from the tip of a spoon on an oiled marble very soon after taking from fire. These drops have a rough surface. When cold, dip in melted confectioners' chocolate.
This is a two-line finishing recipe that depends entirely on the French Nougat earlier in the chapter — melted sugar cooked to a caramel and stirred with shredded blanched almonds. Everything hinges on working fast while the mass is still fluid.
- The hinge: speedCaramel-almond nougat sets within a minute or two off the heat, and once it stiffens it cannot be dropped from a spoon. Have the oiled surface ready and portioned before the sugar comes off the burner, and keep the pan over the barest heat if the last drops start to drag.
- What "French Nougat" means hereNot the white aerated nougat of Montélimar. In this book it is sugar melted dry to a caramel with blanched shredded almonds stirred in — closer to praline or croquant, which is why the drops have a rough surface.
- Sugar temperatureThe book gives no temperature. Dry-melted sugar is past hard crack, up in the caramelization range above roughly 320F, and colors quickly once there. Pull it at a medium amber; carryover heat in a heavy pan will darken it further and bitter caramel ruins the whole batch.
- Oiled marbleA marble slab wiped with a neutral oil was the standard confectioner's surface. A silicone baking mat or a lightly oiled sheet pan works as well; anything with a raised lip is easier to slide a spatula under.
- Confectioners' chocolatePeriod shorthand for chocolate sold for dipping and coating rather than for eating. Use couverture and temper it, or a compound coating chocolate if you want to skip tempering; untempered eating chocolate is liable to bloom and to set soft against the caramel.
- Dipping and moistureLet the drops cool completely and dip them the same day. Caramel is hygroscopic and will go tacky in a humid kitchen; the chocolate shell is partly there to seal it.
- Yield and storageYield depends on how much nougat was made; teaspoon-sized drops from a small batch will run to a couple of dozen or so. Store in a tin between layers of parchment, cool and dry, not refrigerated.
Confectionery occupies its own chapter in the Boston Cooking School book, and candy-making was a genuine domestic accomplishment around 1900 - a skill for gifts, church fairs and evening entertaining, taught alongside bread and soup. The nougat here belongs to the French caramel-and-almond family, the same technique that produces praline and nougatine, a hard sugar-nut sheet that pastry cooks rolled or molded while warm; "nougatine" is generally used for exactly that brittle worked caramel rather than the soft egg-white nougat. Dropping it from a spoon instead of molding it turns a decorative pastry component into an individual sweet.