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Almond Macaroons
Pour boiling water on half a pound almonds, take skins off and throw into cold water for a few moments, then take out and pound (adding a table-spoon essence lemon) to a smooth paste, add one pound of pulverized sugar and whites of three eggs, and work the paste well together with back of spoon; dip the hands in water and roll mixture into balls the size of a nutmeg, and lay on buttered paper an inch apart; when done, dip the hands in water and pass gently over the macaroons, making the surface smooth and shining; set in a cool oven three-quarters of an hour. If this recipe is strictly followed, the macaroons will be found equal to any made by professional confectioners. -Mrs. L. S. W.
A straightforward almond-paste macaroon, closer to an Italian amaretto than to a French macaron. The proportions are sound; only the equipment and the oven need translating.
- The hinge: a truly smooth pasteEverything depends on grinding the almonds fine enough that the sugar and whites bind into a workable dough rather than a gritty slurry. A food processor does in two minutes what a mortar did in twenty; pulse the blanched almonds with a little of the sugar to keep them from turning to butter.
- "A cool oven"On the old scales "cool" sat below "slow", so read this as somewhere in the 250-300"F range. Macaroons of this type are dried as much as baked, and at 350"F or above they will color and crack before the interior sets. Three-quarters of an hour, as directed, is about right for balls an inch across.
- Weights, not cupsHalf a pound of almonds is roughly 1 1/2 cups whole nuts; a pound of finely ground white sugar is about 2 to 2 1/4 cups. Pulverized sugar here means finely ground white sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today; the closer match is superfine (caster) sugar.
- A tablespoon of essence of lemonNineteenth-century essences varied widely in strength. A tablespoon of modern lemon extract will dominate the almonds; start with a teaspoon or two, or use the grated zest of a lemon instead.
- Egg whites go in raw and unbeatenThree whites are stirred straight into the paste, not whipped. If the mixture is too slack to roll, hold back part of the third white; almond moisture and egg size both vary.
- "The size of a nutmeg"About an inch across, roughly a rounded tablespoon of paste. Space them an inch apart as directed — they spread modestly but do not run.
- Buttered paperParchment needs no butter and releases cleanly. The wet-hand smoothing before baking is what gives the smooth, glossy top the recipe describes, so do not skip it.
- Yield and keepingExpect about three dozen. They firm as they cool and are best after a day in a tin, when the interior has settled into chewiness; they stale quickly if left uncovered.
Almond macaroons belong to a family of sugar-and-nut confections generally traced to Italian monastic and convent kitchens, carried into French and then English confectionery, where they were valued for containing no flour and no leavening — just almonds, sugar and egg white. That made them a test of technique rather than of ingredients, which is why the contributor here ends with a claim about matching professional confectioners: pounding almonds smooth by hand in a mortar was the skilled labor that separated a home cook's macaroon from a shop's. Like much of The Dixie Cook Book, the recipe arrives signed with initials, part of the community-contribution model that shaped American regional cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.