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Nougat Baskets
Blanch one and one-half pounds of almonds, cut them into shavings, and place them near the fire to be thoroughly dried and warmed through. Put three-fourths of a pound of the best confectioner's sugar over a moderate fire with just enough water to keep it from burning, keep stirring it till the sugar begins to bubble, then stir in the almonds, mixing them well with the sugar. Have ready some well-oiled shallow moulds, line them with the nougat, trim the edges nicely with a good-sized pair of scissors, notch the edges, and when the nougat is quite cold, take them out of the shapes and fill up with whipped cream, laying a strawberry on top. Small handles made of candy may be put across each. (2). Blanch one and one-fourth pounds of sweet almonds, cut them into long strips, and dry thoroughly in a warm oven for five or six hours. Take half the weight of the almonds (when they are dry) of sugar, put it into a sugar pan, add the juice of two lemons, and stir it well over the fire until the sugar is all dissolved. Boil quickly for a few minutes but without letting it take color. Remove the pan to the side of the fire and add the almonds. Have ready a basket mould in three parts, oil well and spread the mixture quickly over, thinly but evenly, seeing that it is quite cool before taking it off the mould. Spread a charlotte mould over with the remainder of the paste, and fix it firmly upside down on a dish. Fix the bottom part of the basket on the charlotte mould, and adorn the upper edge of the basket, first with a border of puff paste, baked lightly, and then with a circle of preserved green gages glazed with sugar, fixing two rings of gum paste for handles. Surround the base of the mould with a circle of small cakes, fill the hollow of the basket with vanilla ice-cream and it is ready for use. This makes a handsome table ornament, but requires great experience to prepare.
This is sugar work rather than baking: what the book calls nougat is what a pastry kitchen now calls nougatine or croquant, almond shavings bound in caramel and pressed into a mould while hot. Everything depends on working fast before the mass sets.
- The hinge: keep everything warmNougatine stiffens within a minute or two of leaving the heat. Warm the almonds and the moulds, keep the pan over the lowest possible flame or on a heat diffuser while you line, and work with an oiled rolling pin or spoon. Once it hardens it can be returned to a 300F oven on a silicone mat to soften again.
- "Moderate fire" and the sugar stageThe first version says only to cook the sugar and water until it "begins to bubble" before the almonds go in; nougatine of this type is normally taken further, to a pale amber caramel. The second version is explicitly stopped short of colour, i.e. around the hard-crack stage; taken much below that the finished basket stays tacky rather than snapping.
- Lemon juice is doing chemistryThe acid in the second method inverts part of the sucrose, which discourages the syrup from crystallising into a grainy mass. A pinch of cream of tartar or a spoonful of glucose does the same job with more reliability.
- Drying the almondsFive or six hours in a warm oven means a coal range's residual heat, perhaps 175-200F. A modern oven at its lowest setting, or 200F with the door propped, will dry sliced blanched almonds in under an hour. They must be dry and warm or the caramel seizes on contact.
- ProportionsThe first version runs 1.5 lb almonds to 12 oz sugar; the second, half the almonds' dried weight in sugar, so roughly 10 oz. Both are almond-heavy by current standards, which gives a brittle, open lattice rather than a solid sheet.
- MouldsAny oven-safe metal form will serve: brioche tins, dariole moulds, the outside of a ladle, a small metal bowl. "Charlotte mould" means a plain, slightly tapered cylinder, made in a range of sizes. Oil lightly with a neutral oil, not butter, which browns and sticks.
- Green gages and gum pasteGreengages are a green-fleshed plum, in season briefly in late summer; drained preserved plums or glace fruit substitute directly. Gum paste was a tragacanth-based modelling sugar; the modern equivalent sold for cake decoration is usually bound with tylose or CMC instead. Either is edible but not pleasant to eat.
- Trimming and storageTrim the edges with scissors while the sheet is still pliable, not after it cools, or it will shatter. Finished baskets absorb atmospheric moisture and go sticky within hours; keep them airtight with a desiccant and fill with cream or ice cream only at the moment of serving.
Nougatine of this kind descends from the French croquant, the caramel-and-almond paste that nineteenth-century pastry chefs used as a structural material for the pièces montées that crowned formal dinners; the technique is generally traced to the workshops of Carême and his successors, who treated sugar as an architectural medium. Oscar Tschirky's book, compiled from the Waldorf's kitchens in the 1890s, records both the practical small version, an individual basket filled with whipped cream and a strawberry, and the full display piece built up over an inverted charlotte mould, and it is candid in admitting the latter "requires great experience." That frankness is characteristic of the period's grand-hotel cookery, where the dessert course was expected to be looked at before it was eaten, and where the confectioner was a distinct specialist within the brigade rather than an ordinary cook.