No. 3188

Macaronade

Prepare a small vanilla frangipane cream (No. 44), neither too sweet nor too light; add to it an equal amount of sweet jelly (No.106); when cold add to it a few spoonfuls of candied pineapple cut in small dice and stir on ice with a spoon until it becomes quite stiff. Cut two dozen soft macaroons in halves, dip the pieces one by one in maraschino and range them at once on a dish, leaving them until they have entirely absorbed all the liquor. Pour into the bottom of a deep dish a layer of the prepared cream; on this set a layer of the soaked macaroons; cover over with more cream and continue to alternate the cakes and cream until a high pyramid is formed, then smooth the surface and keep it for ten minutes on ice; cover the whole with a layer of well-whipped cream, drained thoroughly and flavored with vanilla, but only slightly sweetened; smooth the cream, decorate it through a cornet and serve at once.

← No. 3187 Jelly with Fruits and Kirsch Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3189 Marshal Ney →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Ranhofer assembly rather than a cooked dish: a stiffened almond cream layered with liquor-soaked macaroons and built into a cone. Nearly everything depends on getting the cream cold and firm before you start stacking.

The hinge: stiffen the cream firstStir the cream mixture over an ice bath until it becomes quite stiff, as the recipe directs, before any macaroons go near it. A loose cream will not support a pyramid and the whole thing slumps.
Frangipane cream (No. 44)In The Epicurean this is a cooked pastry cream enriched with ground almonds or crushed macaroons and egg — not the raw almond-butter frangipane of a tart filling. Make a vanilla pastry cream on the firm side and beat ground blanched almonds into it while warm.
"Sweet jelly" (No. 106)A clear sweetened gelatin jelly, which in Ranhofer's kitchen would have been set with calf's foot or gelatine. Use a plain vanilla or lemon gelatin jelly set slightly firmer than you would eat on its own, melted and folded into the cream while both are barely warm; an equal amount, as written — the text does not say whether by weight or by volume.
MacaroonsSoft almond macaroons of the amaretti morbidi type — chewy, egg-white-and-almond. Not coconut macaroons and not French macarons, which will dissolve. Two dozen halved gives 48 pieces.
MaraschinoThe dry, clear cherry-pit liqueur (Luxardo or similar), not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Pour it into a shallow dish, dip each half, and let the pieces sit until the liquor is fully drawn in; standing in a puddle makes them collapse.
"On ice"The refrigerator throughout, or a bowl set in ice water where the text says to stir. The ten-minute rest before the whipped cream goes on presumably serves to firm the surface rather than to chill it through; the recipe does not say.
CornetA paper piping cone, rolled from parchment and snipped at the tip. A small star tip in a piping bag does the same work.
Serve at once, as instructedLeft standing the macaroons go to paste and the pyramid settles. Build it, coat it, decorate it and take it to the table.

A Little History

Macaronade here simply means "a thing made of macaroons" — Charles Ranhofer's name for one of the many cold entremets he built at Delmonico's. It belongs to the same family as the charlotte and the pouding à la diplomate: dry, sweet cakework soaked in liqueur, bound with a set cream, and moulded or stacked so it could be cut at table. Almond macaroons with maraschino was a common pairing in nineteenth-century French pastry, the cherry-pit liqueur echoing the bitter-almond note in the biscuits. Readers who go looking for macaronade elsewhere will more often find the southern French beef-and-pasta dish of the same name, associated with Sète and the Languedoc; the two are unrelated beyond the shared root in macaroni and macaron, whose origin is disputed but usually traced to Italian maccarone.