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Honey Nougat
Place a pound and a half each of sugar and strained honey in a saucepan over a very gentle fire, and stir it until quite brittle, which can be found out by putting a little cold water in the sugar. Add the beaten whites of three eggs and stir them in. If the mixture is not sticky stir in a little flavoring of orange essence, and then mix in a pound and a half of sweet almonds, blanched and dried; blend it all well together and spread it two inches thick on oiled papers; lay it between two boards, put a heavy weight on top and leave until quite cold. Then cut in strips.
A classic hard nougat in the Montélimar mould, written for a cook who could read sugar by eye. The whole recipe hinges on the sugar stage, and the cold-water test named here is the only guidance given.
- The hinge: "quite brittle"The cold-water test (the recipe as printed has it backwards, putting the water into the sugar) is looking for syrup that sets brittle rather than chewy, i.e. the hard-crack stage, about 300-310F on a thermometer. Short of that the nougat never sets and stays a sticky paste; much past it the honey scorches and turns bitter.
- Honey burns before sugar does"A very gentle fire" is not politeness. Honey's fructose darkens well below hard-crack temperature, so use a heavy pan, the lowest workable flame, and expect this to take considerably longer than a plain sugar syrup.
- Quantities and yieldA pound and a half each of sugar, honey and almonds is a very large batch, giving something under four and a half pounds of nougat once the syrup has boiled down. Halving or quartering it is sensible for a home pan, and the proportions scale cleanly.
- Adding the whitesThree whites to three pounds of syrup is a very small proportion by modern standards; it aerates and whitens rather than making a true meringue-based nougat. Whip them stiff first and work fast, off the heat, or they will cook into threads.
- "If the mixture is not sticky"An odd instruction as printed -- read it as a check that the mass is still pliable enough to work. The orange essence is flavouring, not a corrective; add it in any case, a teaspoon or so, and use orange oil or extract rather than orange-flower water.
- Sweet almondsThe qualifier mattered in 1896, when bitter almonds were sold alongside sweet ones for flavouring. Use ordinary blanched almonds, and dry them thoroughly in a low oven -- damp nuts will make the nougat weep.
- Oiled papers and boardsParchment or edible rice paper does the job now. The mass is spread two inches thick and then pressed between boards, which evens the slab and drives out air pockets; leave it several hours until completely cold and firm before cutting.
- Cutting and keepingCut with a heavy oiled knife or a serrated blade, in strips then bars. Wrap each piece; hard nougat picks up humidity and goes tacky within a day in an open dish.
Nougat of this kind -- honey, egg white and almonds boiled hard and pressed -- reaches Europe through the Mediterranean confectionery tradition, appearing as turron in Spain, torrone in Italy and nougat de Montelimar in the Drôme, historically Dauphiné, where local almonds and lavender honey made the town's name. The word is generally traced to Occitan pan nogat, roughly nut bread. Oscar Tschirky's inclusion of it under the Waldorf's own kitchen work is a reminder of how much a large hotel confectionery department made in-house around 1896: petits fours, bonbons and pressed candies were turned out by the pound for banquet tables and after-dinner service, at a time when a guest expected sweets to come from the house rather than from a box.