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Croquante Paste
Mix eight ounces of fine sugar with one pound of flour, then stir in sufficient beaten yolks of eggs to form a smooth paste. When well-kneaded, roll it out in the specified shape and about one-fourth inch thick. Rub the shape with butter and press the paste closely over it to cut the pattern well through, then lay it on a baking-tin, dip a paste-brush in the beaten white of egg, and brush the surface of the paste over; sprinkle with sugar and bake in a slow oven. When cooked, remove it carefully from the tin, and cover with jam.
A sweet egg-yolk paste of the kind Victorian and Edwardian pastry departments used for shaped, crisp bases rather than for tender pastry. The instructions assume a professional who already owns the moulds and knows the bake, so the gaps are worth filling in.
- The hinge: bake it dry, not brownCroquante paste is meant to come out pale, hard and snapping crisp, which is why the oven is slow. Much colour suggests it has gone too far.
- Slow ovenRead that as 300F (150C), on a middle rack. Expect roughly 25 to 40 minutes depending on thickness; the piece is done when it is firm all through and lifts cleanly, not when it takes colour.
- Egg yolks are the unmeasured ingredientOne pound of flour with 8 oz sugar is likely to take something in the region of a dozen large yolks, though this is only an estimate; the original says "sufficient" because flour and eggs vary. Add them a few at a time until the mass just coheres into a stiff, non-sticky paste; a wet dough will spread and lose the pattern.
- Fine sugarIn period usage this means a finely sifted sugar; caster or superfine is the nearest modern equivalent. Coarse granulated risks a gritty surface in so dry a paste.
- "The shape"A metal or wooden mould, hoop or patterned cutter of the sort a pastry kitchen kept for set pieces. The paste is pressed onto the buttered form to take the pattern and cut the outline in one motion; a stencil, tart ring or firm cookie cutter does the same job.
- Butter is for release, not richnessThere is no fat in the paste itself. Rubbing the mould with butter simply keeps the paste from sticking as it is pressed and lifted.
- Egg wash and sugarBeaten white brushed on and dusted with sugar gives the glassy, faintly frosted top. Use a light hand; pooled white will bubble and distort a flat panel.
- Jam and timingSpread the jam only once the piece is fully cold, or the crispness goes quickly. Assembled and filled, these pieces are best eaten the day they are made; unfilled, they should keep for some days in an airtight tin.
- YieldA pound of flour makes a substantial quantity, enough for a large set piece or two to three dozen small shapes. Halve it for domestic purposes.
Croquante is simply the French for crunching or crisp, and in nineteenth-century pastry work it named both a hard caramel-and-almond confection and, as here, the stiff sugar-and-yolk paste used to build shaped, ornamental bases. Confectioners of the period were expected to produce architecture as much as dessert: pressed panels, hoops and cut patterns assembled into stands and centrepieces for the buffet table, then masked with jam or glaze. That is why the recipe specifies a mould, a quarter-inch thickness and a slow oven but gives no baking time or serving suggestion, since it is a component rather than a dish.