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Vanilla Tartlets
Peel and blanch five dozen almonds, place them in a mortar with five ounces of loaf sugar, pound them to a powder, and then mix in with them a small quantity of vanilla sugar. Whip the whites of half a dozen eggs to a stiff froth, stir the pounded almonds and sugar in with them. Butter some tartlet-moulds, line them with puff-paste, fill them with the egg mixture, and bake them in a moderate oven. The tartlets may be served either hot or cold.
A macaroon-style almond filling baked in puff-paste shells. The whole thing hinges on how you combine the almond paste with the whipped whites: the original says "stir," but treat it as folding or the meringue collapses and the filling bakes dense and weeping.
- Five dozen almondsSixty blanched almonds weigh roughly 2 1/2 oz (70-75 g). Blanching means a 60-second dip in boiling water so the skins slip off; dry them well before grinding or the paste turns gummy.
- Mortar versus processorA food processor does the pounding, but it heats the nuts and they oil quickly. Pulse in short bursts with the sugar in from the start, which absorbs the oil and keeps the mixture powdery rather than turning it to almond butter.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane broken from a cone, valued because it was clean and hard enough to pound. Five ounces of ordinary granulated sugar (about 3/4 cup) is the direct equivalent; superfine dissolves even better into the whites.
- Vanilla sugarNot a flavouring bottle but sugar stored with a split vanilla pod for a week or two. A tablespoon of it, or the seeds scraped from half a pod, is the intent here; a teaspoon of extract works if you have nothing else.
- Six egg whitesSix modern large whites run to about 200 g. Against 2 1/2 oz of almonds that gives a very loose filling, and if it will not hold its shape in the shell you may prefer to use four or five.
- A moderate oven350F / 175C. Higher and the meringue domes, cracks and browns before the puff-paste base has set.
- Puff-paste shellsLine the moulds, then chill them until firm before filling. Warm puff paste slumps under a wet filling and the layers weld shut. Fill no more than two-thirds full.
- Timing and yieldThe original gives none. Expect 18-25 minutes for standard tartlet moulds, until the tops are set and pale gold and the pastry edges are cooked through. Depending on the size of the moulds, the quantities should fill something in the region of two dozen small tartlets.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection was assembled at a hotel where the pastry section worked in a broadly French idiom, and this is a straightforward hotel-kitchen version of the almond-and-egg-white fillings that run from ratafia biscuits through frangipane tarts. The technique is older than the recipe: pounded blanched almonds bound with sugar and whipped whites is essentially macaroon paste, a preparation European confectioners had been making for centuries. Such a filling would also have suited a large kitchen, where whites accumulated from yolk-heavy sauces and custards, though that is inference rather than anything the recipe states. The instruction to pound in a mortar rather than buy ground almonds is worth noting: commercial almond meal existed by this date, and freshly ground almonds are more fragrant than packaged flour.