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Meringues and Macaroons: Almond
Date and Almond Meringues 3/4 cup Jordan almonds 1/2 cup dates White 2 eggs 2/3 cup powdered sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon lemon juice Blanch the almonds, wash dates, and remove stones, and put both almonds and dates through meat chopper together. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, then add gradually, while beating constantly, one third cup sugar, the vanilla, salt, and lemon juice, and fold into the mixture the nuts, dates, and one fourth cup sugar. Drop from tip of spoon on buttered tin sheet one inch apart. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and bake in a moderate oven from twelve to fifteen minutes.
Cinnamon Circles 1 1/4 cups almonds Whites 2 eggs 1 cup powdered sugar 1/3 grated lemon rind 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup confectioners' sugar Water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Chop almonds without blanching. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, add gradually the powdered sugar mixed with lemon rind and cinnamon, and fold in the almonds. Dredge a board or marble slab with flour and then with powdered sugar, turn out mixture, pat with rolling pin, and roll to one fourth inch in thickness. Shape with a small round cutter, place on a slightly buttered tin sheet, and bake in a moderate oven. Cover with frosting made of confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and enough water to make of the right consistency to spread. Almond Paste 1/2 pound blanched almonds 1 pound powdered sugar Yolks 2 eggs Rose water Almond extract Dry almonds and put through the meat chopper, using a fine grinding knife. Add powdered sugar, and melt slightly over the fire, add yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon colored, and cook until mixture is thick enough to spread.
Mix rose water and almond extract in equal portions, and use to flavor the paste to taste.
Use additional rose water to make it the right consistency, working it on a slab with a spatula.
For macaroons it should be a stiff mixture; for shaping into flowers, fruits, et cetera, it may be a little softer.
Macaroons 1/2 pound almond paste 1 cup sugar (scant) Whites 4 eggs 1/3 cup powdered sugar Break almond paste into small pieces, and mix with the hand, adding gradually the one scant cup of sugar and the whites of eggs, of which there should be a scant half cup. When perfectly blended, stir in the powdered sugar. Shape with pastry bag and tube on tin sheets covered with thin paper, and bake in a slow oven. Remove from oven, invert paper and macaroons, and wet paper with a cloth wrung out of cold water, when macaroons may be easily removed. Christmas Macaroons Frost macaroons with ornamental frosting, and decorate with a wreath of green frosting leaves tied with a red bow of frosting.
Almond Macaroons Prepare macaroons as in recipe above, and before baking, sprinkle with almonds blanched, and shredded or chopped.
Almond Cakes 1/2 pound almond paste 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar White of egg Blanched almonds Put almond paste and confectioners' sugar through a puree strainer, and work with spatula until well blended. Add just enough unbeaten white of egg to make mixture of such a consistency that it may be easily formed into balls. Roll each ball in slightly beaten white of egg, press two balls together for each cake, and where balls are joined insert in each ball half a blanched almond. Bake in a very slow oven.
Scrolls 1/2 pound almond paste 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar White 1 small egg Chopped nuts Work almond paste and sugar together on marble slab, add egg gradually, working it in with a spatula until mixture is perfectly smooth. Shape mixture, which should be quite soft, in a long roll. Cut off pieces three inches long, roll in nuts, shape like a scroll, and lay on a buttered tin sheet. Bake twenty minutes in a slow oven, and frost with confectioners' sugar mixed with two tablespoons water and one teaspoon lemon juice.
True Lovers' Knots Put Scroll Mixture into bag with small tube in the end, and shape on buttered sheet like bow knots. Sprinkle with chopped nuts. Bake twenty minutes in a slow oven.
Chocolate Almond Macaroons Whites 2 eggs 3/4 cup powdered sugar 1 ounce unsweetened chocolate 1/2 cup Jordan almonds Beat eggs until stiff, and add sugar gradually, while beating constantly. Carefully cut and fold in chocolate which has been melted and slightly cooled, and two thirds of the nut meats blanched and chopped. Drop mixture from tip of teaspoon on buttered tin sheet, sprinkle with remaining nuts, and bake in a slow oven.
Peanut Macaroons Whites 2 eggs 1/2 cup fine granulated sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 2/3 cup shelled peanuts Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and add sugar and vanilla gradually, continuing the beating. Finely chop peanuts, and fold them into the egg mixture. Drop from tip of spoon on buttered and floured tin sheet, one and one half inches apart. Place half a peanut on each macaroon, and bake in a slow oven twelve to fifteen minutes.
Pecan Macaroons White 2 egg 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup pecan nut meats 1/4 teaspoon salt Beat white of egg until stiff, and sugar gradually, continuing the beating. Fold in nut meats, finely chopped and sprinkled with salt. Drop from tip of spoon, one inch apart, on a buttered and floured sheet, and bake in a moderate oven about twelve minutes, or until delicately browned. Cornflake Macaroons Whites 2 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 teaspoon salt 2 cups cornflakes 1/2 cup shredded cocoanut Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and add gradually the sugar and salt; then fold in the cornflakes and cocoanut. Drop mixture from tip of teaspoon on a well-greased tin sheet one inch apart. Bake in a moderate oven until delicately browned. Remove from pan while warm.
A run of almond-based confections that share one hinge: in this book "powdered sugar" and "confectioners' sugar" are two different products, and swapping them will change the texture of every batch. A few notes before you start.
- Powdered vs. confectioners' sugarIn American cookbooks of this period "powdered sugar" is a fine granulated sugar, coarser than the boxed sugar we now call powdered; "confectioners'" is the very fine cornstarch-cut sugar sold today. Where the recipe says powdered, superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match; use modern confectioners' only where the original names it, chiefly in the frostings and in the almond paste doughs.
- Jordan almondsNot the candy-shelled wedding almonds. Jordan almonds are the long, flat, sweet Spanish variety (the name is generally traced to the French jardin, not to the river); any good whole blanched almond substitutes.
- Oven temperaturesThe book names only moderate, slow and very slow. By the usual modern equivalents that is roughly 350F for moderate, 300-325F for slow, and 250-275F for very slow, as in the Almond Cakes. Most of the macaroons here are slow-baked so the meringue dries rather than colors, though the Pecan and Cornflake versions call for a moderate oven.
- Unstated bake timesSeveral recipes give none. As a starting point, expect roughly 20-25 minutes for the piped macaroons in a slow oven, 12-15 minutes for the Cinnamon Circles in a moderate one, and 30-40 minutes for the Almond Cakes in a very slow one; in each case they are done when set and dry on the surface but still pale.
- Meat chopperA hand-cranked grinder. A food processor does the same work, but pulse dates and almonds together in short bursts so the dates do not turn the mixture to paste.
- Paper and pans"Thin paper" is the period equivalent of parchment, and the trick of wetting the underside to release macaroons is only necessary with plain paper. Parchment or a silicone mat removes the need for it entirely.
- Egg white volumesThe book quietly gives the standard: four whites should measure a scant half cup, about 110-120 ml. Modern large eggs run a little bigger, so measure rather than count if you want the macaroon mixture to pipe properly.
- The almond paste, and eating it rawHalf a pound of almonds plus a pound of sugar makes far more paste than the half-pound each of the later recipes calls for; commercial almond paste works in all of them. Note that the yolks here are only cooked over the fire until the mixture thickens, at no stated temperature. That is fine when the paste is baked into macaroons or cakes, but the recipe also suggests shaping it into flowers and fruits to be eaten as they are, which means barely cooked egg yolk. Use a current marzipan recipe for anything not going into the oven.
- Cinnamon Circles measurement"1/3 grated lemon rind" means the grated zest of a third of a lemon, roughly a teaspoon.
- YieldThe book gives no yields. As a rough guide, the dropped meringue mixtures should give something in the region of two dozen small cookies, and the piped macaroons made from half a pound of paste rather more, depending on tube size.
Macaroons predate almost everything else on this page: the word comes through French macaron from the Italian maccarone, and the original article was nothing but ground almonds, sugar and egg white, often said to have been made in Italian and later French convents, and carried into English and American baking. Almond paste is the same three-part idea bound firmer, the marzipan that European confectioners had long modelled into fruits and flowers for banquet tables, which is exactly the use suggested here. What dates this particular collection is the company the almonds keep: peanuts, pecans, shredded coconut and, at the end, two cups of cornflakes. Boxed breakfast cereal reached American kitchens in the early twentieth century and was absorbed into home baking within a generation, and a cornflake macaroon sitting beside a rose-water marzipan is a fair snapshot of an old craft meeting the grocery shelf.