No. 3174

Meringue Flawn

Flan Meringue

Line a flawn ring with flawn paste (No. 135); raise the edges and leave to repose for half an hour. Make a frangipane cream (No. 44), well flavored with vanilla; as soon as cold fill the pie with it as far as the top, then push it into a hot oven; remove when baked, cool and cover the top with a thin coating of apricot marmalade (No. 3675); cover it all with meringue (No. 140). Smooth this with a knife and decorate with some more of it pushed through a cornet; bestrew the entire surface lightly with icing sugar, set it in a slack oven to color the meringue, then decorate through a cornet with currant jully (No. 3670), or apple jelly (No. 3668), placing it inside the decorations, representing round or oval rosettes.

← No. 3173 Gooseberry Flawn Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3175 Pear and Apple Flawn →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cross-referenced Delmonico's assembly: sweet pastry shell, almond pastry cream, apricot glaze, meringue, piped jelly. The numbers point to other pages of The Epicurean, so the whole thing has to be reconstructed from parts.

The hinge: bake the meringue dry, not brownThe hinge: a low oven, only to take a little color -- "slack oven" in period usage is a cool one, somewhere in the region of 250-300F, and the recipe wants it only to color the meringue lightly, hence the dusting of icing sugar over the surface first. Too hot and the meringue beads syrup and slumps off the apricot glaze.
Flawn and flawn ring"Flawn" is the older English spelling of flan, an open tart. A flawn ring is a bottomless tart ring set on a baking sheet; the recipe gives no size, so any shallow ring, or a straight-sided fluted tart tin with a removable base, does the same job.
Flawn pasteRanhofer's No. 135 is not given on this page; a firm sweet shortcrust is the usual modern stand-in. The half-hour rest before baking would help the raised edge hold its shape.
Frangipane cream, 1894 senseHis No. 44 is a cooked pastry cream enriched with almonds and crushed macaroons, not the modern butter-and-almond frangipane creamed raw. It is thick enough to fill a shell cold and set again in the oven.
Oven for the tart itself"A hot oven" is a brisk one by period reckoning, roughly 400F and up, enough to set and lightly color a filled shell. Note that Ranhofer does not blind-bake the shell first.
Apricot marmaladeNo. 3675; in practice sieved apricot preserve, brushed on warm and thin so it forms a glaze between filling and meringue.
CornetA paper piping cone, rolled from parchment and snipped. Use a small plain or star tip for the meringue decoration and a very fine plain opening for the jelly.
The jelly finishPipe the currant or apple jelly only after the tart has cooled completely — warm meringue melts it and the rosettes bleed. Loosen the jelly by stirring, not heating, if it is too stiff to pass the cone.
YieldPortions depend on the ring you use; a tart of this richness cuts small. Its placement under Cold Entremets indicates it is served cold, and it is best finished the day it is made.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summation of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered cross-references make it less a cookbook than a professional kitchen's index — a recipe like this one assumes a brigade with paste, pastry cream, glaze and meringue already standing by. "Flawn" is the old English form of flan, descending through Old French flaon from Late Latin fladonem, itself from a Germanic word for a flat cake. The frangipane filling carries its own traditional story: the almond cream is generally traced to a Roman noble family named Frangipani, said to have given its perfumed glove scent to the flavoring, though the link is repeated far more often than it is documented. What the recipe really shows is the Gilded Age dessert aesthetic — a tart finished with piped meringue and colored jelly rosettes, built to be looked at down a long table before anyone cut it.