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Almond Cakes
Take some Valencia almonds, and put them in a large basin with an equal quantity of sugar, a little essence of lemon and mixed spice. Mix with a wooden spoon, together with the yolks of fifteen eggs to every pound of the almonds used, then stir in the whites of the eggs whipped till quite stiff, and lastly, work in thoroughly a little sifted pastry flour. Have ready a sufficient number of buttered fancy moulds, and bake until a light brown in a moderately quick oven.
This is a batter in the macaroon-and-sponge family, written for a professional pastry cook who already knew the proportions. The instructions assume knowledge the modern reader has to supply.
- Valencia almondsA sweet Spanish almond, mild in flavour. Any good blanched sweet almond works. They must be blanched and ground fine, effectively to almond flour, before mixing; the recipe takes that step for granted.
- Equal quantity of sugarWeight for weight with the almonds, not volume. For one pound of ground almonds, one pound of caster or superfine sugar.
- Fifteen yolks to the poundThat is the whole structure of the cake. There is no butter and almost no flour, so the eggs and almond oil carry everything. Fifteen yolks is roughly 10 oz of yolk from large eggs; the whites of those same fifteen eggs are what get whipped and folded back in.
- Essence of lemonLemon oil, far stronger than modern lemon extract. A quarter teaspoon of oil or about a teaspoon of extract per pound of almonds is in the right range, along with finely grated zest if you want it.
- Mixed spiceThe British-style blend: mostly cinnamon and nutmeg with allspice, clove and a little coriander and ginger. Half a teaspoon per pound of almonds is enough; more and it fights the almond.
- A little sifted pastry flourGenuinely ambiguous. In batters of this type it is a binder rather than a structure, on the order of 2 to 3 oz per pound of almonds. Fold it in last and stop the moment it disappears.
- The hingeThe whites are the only leavening. Whip them to stiff but not dry, fold a third in to slacken the heavy almond paste, then fold the rest in with the flour in as few strokes as possible. Overworked, the cakes bake dense and greasy.
- Moderately quick ovenSomewhere around 375 to 400F. Small fancy moulds will take 12 to 18 minutes to reach light brown; anything larger is better at the lower end and needs longer. Butter the moulds and dust them with flour or ground almonds, since this batter sticks.
- YieldA pound of almonds with the sugar and fifteen eggs makes a large amount of batter, enough for roughly three to four dozen small moulded cakes. Halve or quarter it for a domestic kitchen.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel who gave this 1896 book its name, was not a cook but the man who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms, and much of the book reads as a record of what his kitchen brigade actually made. Almond cakes of this kind sit in a long European line running from marzipan and the Italian and Iberian almond-and-egg confections through the French biscuit tradition, where beaten whites and ground nuts stood in for butter and most of the flour. The specification of Valencia almonds is a period marker, naming a particular imported variety rather than simply calling for almonds. The baking in "fancy moulds" points to the same taste for shaped, individually portioned pastries that filled hotel petit-four trays at the turn of the century, when a course of small cakes was expected at the close of a long menu.