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Hazel-nut Cakes
Put four ounces of blanched and shelled hazel-nuts and one ounce of sweet almonds into a mortar and pound them coarsely; whisk the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth, and mix them with the almonds, also six or eight ounces of sugar and sufficient flour to make the whole into a paste. Roll the paste out as thin as possible, and with a round tin cutter cut it into small cakes. Butter some baking-tins, place the cakes on them at a short distance from each other, and bake in a slow oven. When cooked, leave the cakes until cold, then pack them in tin canisters.
A nut meringue paste rolled and cut like a biscuit dough, dried more than baked. The proportions are given by weight, and the flour is left to the cook's judgement, which is where most of the difficulty lies.
- Weights, not cupsFour ounces of hazelnuts is about 115 g, one ounce of almonds about 30 g, and six to eight ounces of sugar is 170-225 g. Weigh them.
- "Sufficient flour" is genuinely vagueThe original gives no quantity because the amount depends on how wet the egg whites and how oily the ground nuts are. Add it a spoonful at a time until the mass just stops sticking to the board; too much and the cakes bake hard rather than short.
- A slow oven300F/150C. These are meant to dry pale and crisp, not to colour. At a higher heat the sugar catches at the thin edges before the centres are set.
- Pound coarsely, and mean itA mortar leaves texture. A food processor will run hazelnuts straight to butter in a few seconds, so pulse briefly and stop while the pieces are still visible. Chilling the nuts first helps.
- Blanched hazelnutsThe papery skin is bitter and will not come off in cold water. Toast the nuts at 350F for eight to ten minutes, then rub them in a rough towel; most of the skin flakes away.
- Sweet almondsThe specification distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older kitchens kept as a flavouring. Any ordinary supermarket almond is a sweet almond.
- RollingThe paste is sticky and has no gluten structure to speak of. Roll it between two sheets of parchment, chill briefly, then cut, and lift the rounds with a thin palette knife.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; a small round cutter on thinly rolled paste will produce several dozen. The closing instruction to pack them in tin canisters shows they were meant to be stored: fully cooled and airtight, they should hold their crispness.
Ground-nut cakes of this kind might reasonably be placed at the meeting point of the French petit four sec and the older European macaroon tradition, in which pounded nuts, sugar and egg white stood in for a flour dough entirely. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records the working repertoire of the Waldorf's kitchens, and small dry biscuits like these would have had a place in it. The hazelnut points to the Continental side of that repertoire. The closing direction to pack the cooled cakes in tin canisters is a reminder that a hotel pastry department worked days ahead, and that airtight tin was the only reliable defence against a humid kitchen.