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Almond Tartlets
Line a sufficient number of tartlet-moulds with paste, cut the paste on the rims of the moulds, then mask the bottom with a thin layer of marmalade. Pound some blanched almonds dried in the oven, mixing by degrees the same amount of sugar, a little orange or lemon zest, and the yolk of half a dozen eggs. Fill the tartlets, sprinkle them over with fine sugar, and bake in a slack oven for twenty-five or thirty minutes.
Oscar writes for a kitchen brigade that already knows the proportions, so the quantities are left almost entirely to the cook. The filling is a frangipane-style almond paste bound only with yolks, which changes how it should be handled.
- Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is usually reckoned at about 300-325F. The low heat matters here: a yolk-bound almond filling with no flour or whole egg is liable to curdle and weep at higher temperatures, and the sugar on top may scorch before the centre sets.
- Working quantitiesEqual weights of almonds and sugar is the only ratio given, together with the yolks of six eggs; any absolute weight is guesswork. On the order of 5 oz (1 cup) blanched almonds and 5 oz sugar with the zest of half a lemon or orange would fill roughly twelve 2.5-inch tartlet moulds, though six yolks would suit a larger quantity.
- "Paste" means pastryA plain sweet short paste or pate sucree. "Cut the paste on the rims" simply means trimming the overhang flush with the mould rim by rolling a knife or the pin across the top.
- Pounding the almondsDrying blanched almonds in a low oven first keeps them from turning to butter under the pestle. A food processor does the same work, but pulse in short bursts and add the sugar early, as the sugar absorbs the oil and keeps the mixture powdery.
- Masking with marmaladeA thin layer only, brushed or spread over the raw pastry base. Too much and it boils up through the almond mixture; a stiff, well-set marmalade or apricot jam behaves best.
- No blind bakingThirty minutes at 300-325F sets the shell and the filling together. If your moulds are deep or your pastry thick, a short blind bake at 375F before filling will keep the base from staying pale.
- Judging donenessThe filling should be set to a gentle springiness and just coloured; it will still be soft in the centre when hot and firms as it cools. Cool in the moulds before turning out.
- Yield and servingPerhaps a dozen small tartlets, depending on the quantities chosen; these are individual tartlets rather than a single large tart.
Almond tartlets of this kind descend from the French pastry repertoire that shaped hotel cooking in Oscar Tschirky's day: a lined mould, a spoonful of preserve, and a pounded almond-and-sugar filling bound with yolks, the same family of mixture that appears in cookbooks as frangipane. Ground almonds were a standard luxury filling of European confectionery long before commercial almond flour existed, and the instruction to dry the blanched nuts in the oven before pounding belongs to the mortar-and-pestle kitchen, where damp almonds quickly turned oily. The recipe's telegraphic style, with no weights at all, is characteristic of the professional books Oscar drew on for The Cook Book (1896), though the volume itself was sold to a general public as well as to trained cooks.