Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Cream Paste Flavored with Lemon
Cream Paste Flavored with Lemon
Prepare a paste in a saucepan with the yolks of six or seven eggs and two tablespoonfuls of flour, mix in gradually three breakfast cupfuls of boiling cream and a little salt, stirring well with a wooden spoon over a slow fire until the mixture sticks to the spoon, take it from the fire and work it for three minutes, or until it is perfectly smooth, then stir over the fire for ten or twelve minutes longer. Place two ounces of butter in a saucepan, melt it and let it color slightly, and mix this in with the cream. Rub four ounces of sugar on half a rind of lemon, scrape it into the saucepan containing the cream, and work in four ounces of powdered sweet macaroons with a few bitter ones, and stir thoroughly until the cream is stiff. Should it be too thick add a little more cream, and if the reverse, add the yolks of one or two more eggs.
This is a French-style pastry cream — a yolk-and-flour custard built on boiling cream — enriched with browned butter and stiffened with crushed almond macaroons. It is a component, not a dessert on its own.
- The hinge: temper, then cook the flour outWhisk the yolks and flour to a smooth paste before any liquid goes in, then add the boiling cream in a thin stream while stirring. Poured in fast, the yolks scramble and no amount of later beating will smooth it.
- Breakfast cupfulsA breakfast cup ran 8 to 10 fluid ounces, larger than a teacup. Three cups of cream is a fair reading; hold a little back, since the macaroons will thicken the finished cream considerably.
- "A slow fire"Medium-low on a modern burner, and a heavy-bottomed pan. The second stirring of ten to twelve minutes is there to cook the raw taste out of the flour — but once the cream has thickened and bubbled for two or three minutes the starch is done, and further time over heat only risks scorching the bottom.
- The colored butterThe recipe asks only that the butter color slightly, a step in the direction of beurre noisette rather than a full nut-brown. Take it off as soon as it takes color and swirl it into the warm cream off the heat.
- Rubbing sugar on the rindLoaf sugar was abraded against the lemon peel to pick up the oil, then scraped off. With granulated sugar, rub the zest of half a lemon into the 4 oz of sugar with your fingers and let it stand a few minutes; the sugar will go damp and fragrant. Zest alone works, but the oil is what the technique captures.
- Powdered macaroonsThese are the crisp almond macaroon of the period — Italian amaretti are the closest thing on a shelf today. Four ounces crushed to a powder is roughly a cup, and they absorb moisture fast, so add them in stages and judge the stiffness.
- The bitter macaroonsOld "bitter" macaroons were made with bitter almonds, which contain amygdalin. Leave them out, or use a drop of commercial almond extract for the same aromatic edge. Do not substitute actual bitter almonds or unrefined bitter almond oil.
- Correcting with extra yolksThe recipe does not say whether the pan goes back over the fire. If you thin or thicken the cream at the end, bring it back to a simmer for a minute so the added yolk is cooked.
- Yield and useRather more than the three breakfast cupfuls of cream you start with, once the butter, sugar and macaroons go in -- filling for cream puffs, éclairs, a tart shell, or a layered charlotte. Chill with plastic pressed to the surface; it sets firm and should be beaten smooth before piping.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel rather than its chef, but his 1896 Cook Book collected the hotel's working repertoire, and its pastry section is unmistakably French. This is crème pâtissière as the classic kitchens made it — yolks and flour bound with scalded cream — with two less usual touches: browned butter for depth, and pounded macaroons used as both flavoring and thickener. The sugar rubbed against the lemon rind belongs to the era of the sugar loaf, when hard cone sugar was abraded on the peel to strip its oil; the same method survives in the oleo-saccharum of punch making. The call for "a few bitter ones" among the macaroons reflects a period taste for the sharp marzipan note of bitter almond, now generally replaced by synthetic benzaldehyde extract.