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Macaroons with Pistachio Nuts
Blanch and chop fine ten ounces of pistachios, place them in a basin with ten ounces of sifted crushed loaf sugar, a little essence of noyau, and the whites of two eggs. Lay out small quantities about the size of walnuts on wafer papers, keep them apart and with a moistened finger slightly press down the center so as to keep them round. Place them in an oven to bake. Serve when cold.
Madeleine Cakes, Printaniere Rub the rinds of two small lemons on a lump of sugar; crush it very fine with a roller, mixing three ounces of powdered sugar in with it. Put two ounces of this into a saucepan with two ounces of sifted flour, the yolk of one egg and two whole eggs, two tablespoonfuls of brandy and half a saltspoonful of salt. Mix all together with a spatula, and in two minutes, when the paste is well mixed, stir it again for about a minute only. Place the saucepan containing the preparation on a very slow fire, stir it slightly to prevent its sticking to the bottom of the saucepan, and as soon as it becomes liquid take it off. Butter twelve small madeleine moulds, fill them with the preparation, lay them on a baking-sheet, and place them in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Remove, let them cool, and take them out; cut a piece from the thinnest part of the top of each one to serve as a cover, and with a dessertspoon scoop out of each a cavity one inch deep. Put into a saucepan the yolks of eight eggs, one-half pound of powdered sugar, a piece of vanilla bean one inch long and split in halves, also one pint of sweet cream and six ounces of finely-grated cocoa. Stir well with the spatula for two minutes, place the pan on the hot stove, and stir constantly while it is heating; but under no conditions must it be allowed to boil. Remove it from the fire and place the pan in a cool place on the table for thirty minutes, strain it through a sieve into a freezer and freeze. Fill the cavity of each madeleine with this, replace the covers, lay them on a wire grating, and, with a brush, gently glaze as follows: Put into a saucepan one ounce of granulated sugar with one tablespoonful of cold water, and let it come to a boiling point; remove and immediately add two tablespoonfuls of strawberry juice, mixing well together, and sprinkle over with two ounces of well-chopped pistachios. Glaze the cakes with this and put them in the oven for one minute or more; dress on a dish with folded napkin, and serve.
Madeleine Cakes without Butter Put three eggs in a basin with a quarter of a pound of sugar and beat them until frothy, then mix in slowly three ounces of dried and sifted flour, and grate in a small quantity of lemon or orange peel. Grease some small madeleine moulds, fill them with the mixture, and bake in a slow oven. When the cakes are baked take them out of the moulds, and keep dry in biscuit tins until wanted.
Three separate confections run together in one block of type: pistachio macaroons, an elaborate iced madeleine, and a plain butterless madeleine. Read them as three recipes and work them separately.
- Essence of noyauNoyau flavouring was traditionally drawn from bitter almond or peach and apricot kernels, which carry cyanogenic compounds; nineteenth-century essences varied wildly in strength. Use a commercial almond extract or a modern crème de noyaux, a few drops only, and do not attempt to make the essence from kernels at home.
- Loaf sugar, crushed and siftedLoaf sugar came as a hard cone to be broken and rolled fine. Sifted crushed loaf sugar is what we would call caster or superfine sugar; the recipe's later "powdered sugar" in this period usually means the same thing rather than modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch.
- Wafer papersEdible wafer or rice paper, still sold for nougat and macaroons. It bakes onto the base and is eaten with the cookie; parchment works but the finished macaroon will need lifting while barely warm.
- Oven for the macaroonsNo temperature is given. Nut macaroons of this type want 325F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the surface is set and faintly coloured but the inside still soft. Ten ounces of nuts and sugar with two whites gives roughly two dozen walnut-sized mounds.
- Moderate and slow ovensThe Printaniere madeleines go into a moderate oven, 350F, for twenty minutes. The butterless madeleines go into a slow oven, 300F to 325F, and want checking at 12 to 15 minutes; a sponge batter with no fat dries out quickly.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoonful is an eighth of a teaspoon. The batter is small and the salt is a seasoning, not a leavener.
- Grated cocoa"Finely-grated cocoa" here means grated cocoa mass or unsweetened chocolate, not the defatted cocoa powder on a supermarket shelf. Six ounces of unsweetened chocolate, chopped fine, gives the intended richness with the pint of cream.
- The custard is the hingeEight yolks, a pint of cream and a half-pound of sugar must be stirred constantly and taken off before boiling; the instruction is emphatic because a boiled yolk custard curdles into sweet scrambled egg. Cook to 175-180F on a thermometer, strain at once, and chill it over ice or in the refrigerator rather than standing it thirty minutes on the table.
- "Freeze" means a churnThe freezer is a hand-cranked ice-and-salt machine. Churn in an ice-cream maker and keep the result hard-frozen, because the filled madeleines then go back into the oven for a minute under the strawberry glaze and any softness will run.
Oscar Tschirky was not a cook but the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and the 1896 book that carries his name is essentially a survey of what a great New York hotel kitchen of the period could produce, transcribed in the compressed professional shorthand of the day. All three items here belong to the French pastry repertoire that such hotels imported wholesale: the madeleine, the shell-shaped cake generally traced to Commercy in Lorraine, and noyau, the kernel-scented flavouring that gave eighteenth- and nineteenth-century confectionery its characteristic bitter-almond note. The middle recipe, hollowing out baked madeleines to fill them with chocolate ice cream and glazing them with strawberry syrup and chopped pistachio, is pure hotel showmanship, the sort of plate that justified a Waldorf bill. Pistachios were a luxury import in 1896, which is why ten ounces of them reads as extravagance rather than a weeknight cookie.