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Macaroons Flavored with Coffee
Mix one pound of ground almonds and a pound and a half of sugar in a basin with a little extract of coffee, adding the whites of some eggs to form it into a paste. Place it on a wafer-paper in the shape of fingers and bake in an oven until they are of a light pale brown. Take them out when they are done, remove them by damping, and place in paper-boxes until wanted.
A straightforward almond macaroon batter, but the original leaves the egg count, the oven heat and the yield to the cook's judgment. Here is what needs filling in.
- The egg whites are the whole problem"The whites of some eggs" is the only measurement left open, and it decides everything. For 1 lb ground almonds and 1 1/2 lb sugar, start with about 4 large whites and add more a spoonful at a time until the paste just holds a piped shape without spreading; expect somewhere between 4 and 7. Too slack and the fingers flow together, too stiff and they crack rather than crust.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Macaroon paste of this kind bakes at 325-350F, which will bring it to pale brown in roughly 12-18 minutes depending on the thickness of the fingers. Anything hotter colours the outside before the centre sets.
- Extract of coffeeAt this date this generally meant a concentrated liquid coffee essence, often sweetened, closer to a bottled coffee syrup than to instant granules. A tablespoon or two of strong coffee essence, or 2 tsp instant espresso powder dissolved in the minimum water, gives much the same effect. Keep added liquid low or you will need fewer whites.
- Wafer paper and "damping"Wafer paper is the thin edible sheet still sold for cake decorating (often labelled rice paper, though usually made from starch). The instruction to "remove them by damping" is understood to mean brushing or lightly steaming the underside of the sheet so the paper releases and the surplus can be torn away, leaving only the disc under each macaroon. Baking parchment works if wafer paper is unavailable, but then nothing needs damping.
- Ground almonds, not almond flour necessarilyThe recipe assumes almonds ground with their oil intact, which binds the paste. Standard supermarket ground almonds are correct; extra-fine blanched almond flour is drier and will take slightly more egg white.
- Piping the fingers"in the shape of fingers" was most likely done with a bag rather than a spoon: a plain 1/2 inch tube, lengths of about 3 inches, well spaced. Left to stand uncovered for 20-30 minutes before baking, they form a skin and bake with a better gloss.
- Yield and keepingThe full quantity is a professional batch and gives roughly 60-70 fingers; halving or quartering it is sensible at home. The "paper-boxes" served the same purpose as an airtight tin, and these keep well for about a week, softening slightly as they go.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, put his name to this collection in 1896, and its pastry chapters read like the working notes of a large hotel kitchen rather than a household book: pound quantities, no yields, and the assumption that the cook knows what a finished paste feels like. The macaroon itself is far older than the hotel, an almond-and-sugar confection generally traced to Italian and French convent kitchens and long made without flour, which is why it circulated in the nineteenth century as a Passover sweet as well as a hotel petit four. Coffee flavouring belongs to the period's fashion for coffee and chocolate in fine pâtisserie, made practical by the commercial coffee essences then on every grocer's shelf. The wafer-paper base is the giveaway detail of professional practice: it kept a sticky paste from welding itself to the baking sheet in an era before parchment was standard equipment.