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Nougatinas
Blanch and chop fine one pound of sweet almonds. Put two pounds of powdered white sugar and the juice of a lemon in a sugar-boiler over a moderate fire and stir until it boils, then add the almonds, stir them well in and pour the nougatina-paste on a well-oiled marble slab, forming it into an oblong cake one inch thick. Cut it in squares, and when cold, dip these in melted chocolate.
This is a dry caramel praline — almond nougatine — and everything depends on how fast you work once it comes off the heat. Read the whole thing through before you light the burner, because the window between pourable and unworkable is under two minutes.
- The hinge: cut it hotThe mass sets hard as it cools, and once it is cold it shatters rather than cuts. Score and cut the squares while the slab is still hot and pliable, then let them finish cooling before dipping.
- "Sugar-boiler"A heavy unlined copper pan with a pouring lip. A thick-bottomed stainless saucepan works; avoid nonstick and anything thin, which will scorch the sugar before it all melts.
- No water in itTwo pounds of sugar with only lemon juice for liquid is effectively a dry caramel. "Stir until it boils" means stir until the sugar has melted and is bubbling; the book gives no thermometer reading or colour, so judge it by eye. Moderate heat means moderate; too high and the outside burns while the middle is still granular.
- Why the lemon juiceThe acid inverts some of the sucrose and keeps the melted sugar from seizing back into crystals. It is not there for flavor, and it should not be left out.
- Sweet almondsThe specification matters historically — bitter almonds were also sold, and they are not interchangeable. Any blanched sweet almond is what you want. Warm the chopped almonds in a low oven before adding them; cold nuts stiffen the caramel on contact.
- The marble slabOil it lightly and oil a rolling pin or a metal bench scraper as well. Marble pulls heat out fast, which is the point; a sheet pan lined with a silicone mat is the modern substitute, though it cools more slowly.
- Melted chocolateFor squares that stay glossy and snap, temper the chocolate rather than simply melting it. Untempered couverture will still taste right but is liable to set dull and streaky.
- Yield and keepingTwo pounds of sugar and one of almonds gives roughly three pounds of nougatine before dipping, perhaps sixty or so one-inch squares. Store airtight in a dry place; nougatine is hygroscopic and goes tacky in a humid kitchen.
Nougatine is French confectioner's work: caramelized sugar bound with chopped almonds, rolled thin on marble and used both as a candy and as a structural material for the pièces montées that crowned formal nineteenth-century dinners. Cut into squares and chocolate-dipped, as here, it becomes a petit four for the end of the meal — which is why it sits in a Waldorf kitchen book at all. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name fronts this 1896 collection, was not the pastry chef. "Nougatinas" is an anglicised plural of nougatine, which is itself already the diminutive of nougat.