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Macaroon Custard
Crush some macaroons with half their quantity of ratafias, beat the yolks of six eggs together with a pint and a half of cream, sweeten to taste with powdered sugar and flavor with any essence desired; pour the custard in a saucepan, and stir it over a fire with a wooden spoon until on the point of boiling. Mix the biscuits with the custard, and pile them on a glass dish; whisk two whites of eggs to a stiff froth, spread them over the top of the custard, grate over a small quantity of the nutmeg, and serve them.
A boiled custard poured over crushed almond biscuits and crowned with an uncooked meringue. The custard itself is a sound cooked cream, but the topping is raw egg white spread on a cold dish and served immediately, which is why the recipe cannot be recommended as printed.
- The raw white toppingThe two whisked whites are never heated at any stage — they go onto a cooling custard and straight to the table. Raw egg white carries a Salmonella risk, and nothing in the method brings it near the 160F recommended for egg mixtures. A current recipe using either a cooked Italian meringue or pasteurized whites should be used instead.
- Why the custard was safe and the topping is notStirring "until on the point of boiling" carries the custard well past the temperature at which an egg mixture is considered pasteurized, so the cream is both thickened and heated through. The meringue receives no heat at all.
- A pint and a half of creamTwenty-four fluid ounces, or three cups, against six yolks — a rich but pourable custard rather than a set one. American and British pints differed by four ounces in this period; the Waldorf would have meant the sixteen-ounce American pint.
- RatafiasSmall, hard, domed almond biscuits, drier and more sharply almond-flavored than a macaroon. Nineteenth-century versions took their bitterness from apricot kernels or bitter almonds; modern commercial ratafias are flavored with almond extract. Amaretti are the closest thing on most shelves.
- MacaroonsNot the coconut macaroon of American bake sales, and not the Parisian sandwich cookie. Oscar means a plain ground-almond and egg-white biscuit, crisp enough to crush and to hold some structure when soaked.
- "Any essence desired"Vanilla, lemon or orange-flower water all fit the period. Bitter almond essence would also suit the almond biscuits, and is worth avoiding on its own account.
- YieldThree cups of custard plus biscuit fills a glass dish for six to eight, served in the same vessel it was piled into rather than portioned out.
Macaroon custard belongs to a long line of English trifle-adjacent puddings in which dry almond biscuits are softened by a rich cooked cream — the same logic as a tipsy cake or a charlotte, minus the wine. Ratafia biscuits, said to take their name from the almond-and-fruit-kernel cordial called ratafia, were well suited to this kind of work: they were too hard to enjoy alone but held their shape in liquid better than sponge. That Oscar Tschirky includes it among Waldorf recipes at the turn of the century says something about the hotel's dessert repertoire, which drew freely on English nursery and dining-room sweets. The uncooked meringue lid, spread rather than browned, is the detail that has dated most severely.