No. 3088

Pie, Marrow Frangipane

Tourte Frangipane a la Moelle

Wet an eight-inch diameter tart plate and cover with a flat made of the parings of puff paste (No. 146) an eighth of an inch thick; moisten the edges with a brush, lay all around a band of puff paste a quarter of an inch thick by three-quarters of an inch wide, and press the band down on the flat to have the two adhere, and fasten the two ends together. Put in a vessel three ounces of flour and five ounces of sugar; dilute with four eggs, dropping in one at a time, to have the whole very smooth, but in case this fails then strain through a fine wire sieve; increase the proportions of this preparation with one pint of boiling milk, and pour the whole into a saucepan to thicken on the fire; when this is accomplished remove and add two ounces of melted marrow. Leave cool, and with this fill the pie up as far as the band; over these place devices of puff paste, egg over and push the pie into a hot oven to cook it. When done, take out, sprinkle the surface with fine sugar, and return to the oven for a few moments longer, in order to have this glaze. This pie is to be served hot, as soon as removed from the oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's frangipane is not the almond cream of a modern galette des rois but a thick flour-and-egg pastry cream, here enriched with beef marrow. The whole thing stands or falls on cooking that cream properly before it ever sees the oven.

The hinge: cook the cream outWhisk the flour, sugar and eggs to a smooth paste, temper in the boiling milk, then cook in the saucepan while stirring until it thickens and loses its raw-flour taste — a minute or two of actual bubbling. Undercooked, it tastes pasty and slackens in the oven; the sieve is there because lumps at this stage never disappear.
MarrowTwo ounces of melted beef marrow, added off the heat so it does not seize or separate. Ask a butcher for split marrow bones, scoop the marrow, soak it briefly in cold salted water to draw out blood, then warm it gently until liquid and strain. It sets firm when cold, so fold it in while the cream is still warm and let the mixture cool afterwards.
"Parings of puff paste"Trimmings left from earlier puff pastry work — rerolled scraps, which puff unevenly and so suit a flat base. Store-bought all-butter puff, rolled to about 3 mm, does the same job. The band is a separate strip of thicker pastry, roughly 6 mm by 2 cm, laid around the rim to make a raised collar that holds the filling.
VesselAn 8-inch tart plate means a shallow flat metal plate, not a deep pie dish. The plate is wetted rather than greased; the damp surface helps the pastry base stay put as it is laid down. (Note that Ranhofer's own word 'vessel' here refers to the mixing bowl for the flour and sugar.)
"Devices" of puff pasteDecorative cut-outs — leaves, lattice strips, small stamped shapes — laid over the filling and brushed with beaten egg. They are ornament, not a lid; leave gaps so steam escapes.
OvenRanhofer gives no oven temperatures; a 'hot oven' is usually read today as somewhere around 425-450F (220-230C), hot enough to lift the pastry band. Reckon on roughly 25-35 minutes, until the collar and cut-outs are well coloured and the centre is set.
The sugar glazeThe final dusting of caster sugar and brief return to the oven is meant to melt into a shine, not to blacken. A minute or two at the top of a hot oven, or a few seconds under a broiler with the tart watched constantly, gives the same effect.
Yield and servingAn 8-inch tart serves six. It is genuinely a hot entremets: the marrow firms and the pastry softens as it cools, so cut and serve it straight from the oven.

A Little History

The name frangipane is generally traced to the Frangipani family of Rome, whose perfume — almond-scented, by tradition — is said to have lent its name to an almond-flavoured cream taken up by French pastry cooks. By the nineteenth century frangipane in professional French kitchens meant something broader: a stiff flour-thickened pastry cream, often flavoured with crushed macaroons or almonds, used to fill tarts and line pastries. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, gives it here à la moelle — with beef marrow — which places the dish in a long line of sweet marrow cookery that runs from medieval marrow tarts through the marrow puddings of eighteenth-century England to the mince pie that follows one number later. Marrow behaves like a very delicate butter, and in an era when a whole animal came into the kitchen it was too good a fat to waste on the stockpot.