No. 3265

Valentine Cake with Rum

Gateau Valentin au Rhum

Crush one pound of almonds with one pound of sugar and three eggs; make it into a very fine paste; put it into a basin and dilute gradually with thirteen eggs and one gill of rum; beat well until perfectly light. Line a mold with very thin sweet paste (No. 136); fill it three-quarters full with the preparation and strew over some finely cut up almonds. Bake in a very slack oven for three-quarters of an hour, then turn the cake out on a grate and allow to cool; when cold glaze with a light frosting flavored with rum. This cake can be kept for several months if wrapped in tin-foil and left in a dry cool place.

BREAKFAST CAKES (Gateaux de Dejeuner).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A flourless almond batter baked in a pastry-lined mold, in the style of a pain de Gênes. The whole thing stands or falls on how much air you beat into the egg-and-almond mixture, since there is no leavening and no flour.

A very slack ovenThat means roughly 275-300F. The cake is almost entirely egg and almond, and a hotter oven will set and crack the top before the center is cooked. Expect the full 45 minutes, and test with a skewer at the deepest point.
A gill of rumHalf a cup. Use a dark or gold rum; the flavor has to survive both the almonds and the baking.
Sixteen eggs in totalThree go into the almond-sugar paste, thirteen more into the dilution. Eggs of the period are generally assumed to have run somewhat smaller than modern large eggs, so 16 modern large eggs may be on the generous side; about 14 to 15 is a reasonable substitute, added a few at a time so the paste never breaks.
Making the pasteAlmonds, presumably blanched, pounded with the sugar to a smooth marzipan-like mass; Ranhofer does not specify. A food processor does this in a minute or two; pulse rather than run it, or the almonds oil and turn greasy.
Sweet paste No. 136His p a sucr e. Any short sweet pastry rolled very thin will do. Line the mold, chill it firmly before filling, and fill only three-quarters full " this batter rises on beaten egg alone but still climbs.
The light frostingA water icing: confectioners' sugar loosened with a little rum and water to a pourable glaze, brushed over the cooled cake. It should set to a thin matte shell, not a thick layer.
YieldNo mold size is given. The quantities are large and will need a correspondingly large deep mold, filled only three-quarters full, yielding a cake for a crowd in thin slices.
The keeping claimSeveral months wrapped in foil reflects a cool larder and a cake dense with sugar, almond oil and spirit. Modern kitchens are warmer and damper; treat it as good for about a week well wrapped, or freeze it.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in some thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and this section -- large cakes served as an entremets -- belongs to the French pastry repertoire he brought with him rather than to anything American. The cake itself is a variation on the almond-and-egg batters that French patissiers built on pounded almond paste, the family that includes pain de Genes; the absence of flour in the filling is what gives it the dense, moist crumb that made it worth wrapping in tin-foil and keeping. Ranhofer offers no explanation of the name Gateau Valentin, and no documented origin has been established. What the recipe does show plainly is how a professional kitchen of the period thought about scale and storage: a pound of almonds, a pound of sugar and sixteen eggs, baked slowly, glazed, and held in reserve for whenever a sweet course was called for.