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Almond Apricot Pastry
Put a lump of butter in a basin, warm it and beat in a little sifted, crushed loaf sugar, into which put the required quantity of almonds blanched and pounded with a little orange-flower water, and then add the whites of some eggs and the yolks of twice the number, one at a time, and lastly, dredge in by degrees a little dried and sifted flour. Work the mixture well until it is perfectly smooth, then add a little essence of vanilla to flavor. Put a border of rich puff-paste around a dish, pour in the mixture, smooth it on the top and bake in a moderate oven. When done remove and spread a layer of apricot jam on top of it. Put the whites of some eggs in a basin with a little lemon juice and icing sugar until the mixture is quite thick and of the consistence of butter. Put this icing over the jam, smoothing over the surface, and set in the oven again for a few minutes for the icing to set. Take out, let it get cold, cut into slices, and serve.
This is a frangipane tart under apricot jam and a royal-icing lid, written in the old style with almost no quantities at all. The proportions below are inferred from the method, not from the book.
- No quantities givenOscar assumes a cook who knows the ratio. A frangipane of this kind works at roughly equal weights of butter, sugar and ground almonds, with about a quarter that weight in flour; for 4 oz each of butter, sugar and almonds use 2 egg whites and 4 yolks. Treat this as a starting point rather than a transcription.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone that had to be broken and crushed before use. Sifted crushed loaf sugar is caster sugar; ordinary granulated will cream into butter perfectly well.
- Icing sugarHere it means finely powdered sugar for the meringue-style topping, i.e. modern confectioners' sugar. Whipped with egg white and lemon juice it is royal icing, which is why it stiffens "to the consistence of butter."
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, usually in Middle Eastern groceries and baking aisles. It is potent: about half a teaspoon per batch of almonds is plenty. Period cooks often pounded nuts with a little floral water partly to keep them from oiling, as well as for flavour.
- AlmondsBlanched and pounded means skinned and ground to a paste in a mortar. Ready-ground almonds work, though a food processor with a spoonful of the sugar gives a texture closer to the original.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F, though the book gives no temperature. The filling is set when the centre no longer trembles and a skewer comes out clean, roughly 30 to 40 minutes for a shallow tart.
- The pastry borderA strip of puff paste laid around the rim of a shallow dish, not a full lined shell. It rises into a wall that contains the filling; chill it before baking or it will slump inward as the frangipane spreads.
- The icing bakeThe recipe wants only a few minutes, enough to dry and firm the royal icing without browning it; royal icing colours quickly, so watch it.
- YieldA dish of about 9 inches would give roughly 8 to 10 slices, though no size is given. It is cut cold, as the recipe directs, as a sliced pastry rather than a dessert served warm.
Oscar Tschirky, the ma tre d'h tel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, was compiling the standard European pastry repertoire as it stood in a large American hotel, and this is a straightforward member of the almond-cream family generally traced to the Italian and French frangipane of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The pairing of a baked almond filling with apricot jam and a hard white icing was well established in confectionery long before it reached Fifth Avenue. The orange-flower water is worth noting: distilled floral waters were common aromatics in nineteenth-century baking, and were later displaced by vanilla extract, and here the two appear side by side, the floral flavouring pounded into the nuts and the vanilla added at the end.