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Almond Sponge Biscuits
Crack a dozen eggs separately into a teacup, pour them all into a large kitchen-basin, and beat with a whisk until thoroughly mixed; then add by degrees a pound and two ounces of sugar, and beat until it is quite dissolved. Then add a pound and three ounces of fine pastry-flour, and work into a light dough. Have ready sufficient small moulds, warm them and butter the inner surfaces neatly. Fill level to the rims with the dough, dust over the top with powdered sugar, lay them over some blanched chopped almonds, and bake in a moderate oven.
A classic sponge batter of the Savoy-biscuit family: whole eggs, sugar and flour in near-equal weight, with nothing else to lift it. Everything depends on how much air you whip into the eggs and how little of it you lose afterward.
- The hinge: whip to the ribbonThe eggs and sugar carry all the leavening — no baking powder, no separated whites. Beat until the mixture is pale, tripled and falls from the whisk in a thick ribbon that holds its trace for several seconds. Warming the bowl over hot water while beating, then finishing off the heat, makes this far easier.
- "Work into a light dough"This does not mean knead. Sift the flour over the foam in three or four additions and fold with a spatula until just combined; the batter should be thick enough to mound but still pourable. Overworking here collapses the eggs and gives dense, rubbery fingers.
- WeightsA pound and two ounces of sugar is 18 oz, about 2 1/2 cups; a pound and three ounces of flour is 19 oz, roughly 4 1/2 to 4 3/4 cups sifted. Weigh both if you can — the ratio to a dozen eggs (about 21 oz shelled) is the whole recipe.
- Pastry flourFine pastry flour is a soft, low-protein flour around 8-9% protein. Modern pastry flour is a direct substitute; with all-purpose, replacing about 2 tablespoons per cup with cornstarch will soften it.
- Cracking eggs into a teacupNot fussiness. One bad egg in twelve could ruin the whole basin, so each is inspected alone before joining the rest. Still sensible practice when a recipe hinges on a dozen eggs.
- Moderate ovenConventionally reckoned somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no figure. Warmed, buttered moulds — small madeleine, finger-biscuit or shallow tartlet tins — help the batter climb; dust the buttered surfaces with flour or sugar so the biscuits release.
- Almonds and sugarThe instruction to "lay them over some blanched chopped almonds" is loosely worded: scatter chopped blanched almonds over the sugared tops before baking, or bed the almonds in the tins so they sit on the finished surface. Either reading works; the sugar dusting gives the crisp, crackled crust.
- Time and yieldNo time is given because it depends entirely on the mould. Small tins take 12-18 minutes, until springy and golden; larger fingers a few minutes more. The full quantity is a hotel batch — five to six dozen small biscuits. Halving it is straightforward.
- KeepingThese stale quickly and are meant to. Sponge biscuits were baked to be dried out and stored crisp in tins; a further 10 minutes in a 200F oven after baking, with the door ajar, dries them for serving with wine, tea or ices.
Sponge biscuits of this kind — whole eggs beaten with their weight in sugar and flour, baked in small moulds — are often related to the biscuits de Savoie of French pastry, though the resemblance is a family one rather than an established line of descent; a similar batter, spread thin, gives ladyfingers and the sheets used to line charlottes, albeit usually with the eggs separated. Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from 1893 and his 1896 Cook Book is a compiled volume, which may be why the instructions read as they do: a dozen eggs at a time, a kitchen basin rather than a mixing bowl, and "sufficient small moulds" left to the judgment of whoever was on the pastry station. Almonds appear here blanched and chopped by hand in quantity, and their presence marks the dish as a petit four for the dessert service rather than anything meant for breakfast.