No. 128

Almond Paste with Pistachios

Pate d'Amandes aux Pistaches

Have three quarter of a pound of almonds, half a pound of pistachio nuts, a pound and a half of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of orange flower-water and five egg-whites. Peel the almonds and pistachio nuts; dry and pound them with the sugar, egg-whites and orange flower-water till they become a fine paste, then add to it a little vegetable green, so as to give it a soft, green color.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's green almond paste is a working material rather than a finished dish, bound with raw egg white and never cooked at any point in the instructions. That is the problem with it, and it is worth understanding before reading the rest.

Raw egg white, never heatedFive uncooked whites are worked into the paste and the preparation stops there. Nothing in the method brings the eggs to a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and a paste like this would have been handled and worked at room temperature. The heavy sugar load lowers water activity but does not make the mixture reliably safe, and it does not kill anything already present. If you want green almond paste, work from a current recipe written around pasteurised whites or a cooked syrup.
"A little vegetable green"The phrase points to a plant-derived colour, and green made from pressed and clarified spinach was one kitchen source; commercial colouring sold under similar descriptions varied in composition and purity. The instruction gives no quantity and no source, which is another reason the recipe cannot simply be followed.
The proportions, for referenceThree quarters of a pound of almonds and half a pound of pistachios make a pound and a quarter of nuts against a pound and a half of sugar, roughly 1:1.2 nut-to-sugar by weight, which puts this at the sweet, pliable end of the marzipan family rather than the stiff almond paste used as a filling.
Peeling the pistachiosBlanching pistachios and slipping off the skin, including the purplish inner membrane, produces a cleaner green than skins left on, which give a muddier tone.
Orange flower-waterStill sold, but modern bottles vary widely in strength, so two tablespoons in this quantity may read as assertive by contemporary standards.
PoundingThe original assumes a marble mortar and a good deal of arm work. The point of pounding rather than grinding is that the sugar absorbs the oil pressed out of the nuts, so the paste stays smooth instead of separating into a greasy crumb.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer collected these pastes in the Elementary Methods section of The Epicurean (1894) because they were building blocks of the Delmonico's pastry department rather than dishes in their own right: almond paste was rolled and stamped for petits fours, moulded into fruits and figures for table displays, and used to line and mask cakes. The green pistachio version belongs to a French confectionery tradition in which colour marked flavour, and pistachio meant green whether or not enough pistachio was present to do the job on its own. Almond pastes are often said to have reached Europe through the medieval Arab sugar trade, with orange flower water travelling the same route, though the account is a traditional one rather than settled fact; whatever the path, orange flower water turns up reliably alongside almonds in French pastry long after other perfumed waters fell out of use. Ranhofer's neighbouring entries, including a version bound with gum tragacanth, show the range of stiffeners a professional kitchen kept on hand for work that had to hold a shape on a banquet table.