No. 3328

Bordelaise Tartlets

Tartelettes Bordelaises

Pound six ounces of almonds with a pound of sugar; sift it through a sieve, then add to it a quarter of a gill of rum and seven egg-whites; beat well together; now put with it three-quarters of a pound of flour and three-quarters of a pound of melted butter and lastly fourteen very stiffly beaten egg-whites. Line scalloped tartlet molds with sweet paste (No. 136); fill them with the preparation, bestrew lightly with sugar and bake in a medium oven. Unmold as soon as done and leave till cold, then dress on top of each a rosette of Italian meringue (No. 140) flavored with vanilla; bestrew with sugar and return the cakes to the oven to color the meringue; garnish between the parts of the rosette with apricot marmalade (No. 3675), apple jelly (No. 3668) or currant jelly (No. 3670).

← No. 3327 Apple Tartlets Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3329 Cherry Tartlets →

For the Modern Kitchen

A financier-style almond batter in a sweet pastry shell, finished with meringue and jam. Ranhofer writes for a hotel kitchen, so the batch is large and the cross-references do a lot of the work.

The quantities are enormousThe quantities are large -- six ounces of almonds, a pound of sugar, three-quarters of a pound each of flour and butter, and twenty-one egg whites in total, enough batter for several dozen small tartlets. Halving or quartering the batter is sensible for home baking; the proportions scale cleanly.
A quarter of a gillA gill is half a cup, so a quarter gill is one fluid ounce, about two tablespoons of rum. It is a flavoring, not a liquid the batter depends on.
Pounding almonds with sugarThe sugar is there to stop the almonds turning to paste under the pestle. A food processor does the same job, or use 6 oz almond flour whisked with the sugar and skip the sifting.
Two separate lots of whitesSeven whites go in unbeaten to loosen the almond-sugar paste; fourteen more go in beaten stiff at the very end, after the flour and butter. Fold those last whites in gently — they are the only lift in the batter, as there is no chemical leavening and no yolk.
Melted butter temperatureAdd it warm but not hot, so it does not cook or thin the mixture before the beaten whites go in.
A medium ovenRanhofer gives no number; a moderate oven, something in the region of 350F, suits the purpose. The shells and the almond filling want to set and color together; hotter and the exposed batter domes and cracks before the pastry underneath is cooked.
The cross-referenced componentsNo. 136 is a sweet short paste (pâte sucrée); No. 140 is Italian meringue, whites whipped with hot sugar syrup, which holds a piped rosette and browns without weeping. A plain French meringue will slump by comparison.
Coloring the meringueRanhofer sends the finished cakes back to the oven, but the tartlets are already baked and cold. A very hot oven for two or three minutes, or a blowtorch, colors the rosette without warming the shell through.
BestrewSimply to sprinkle. The sugar dusted over the raw batter gives a thin crackled top, and the sugar over the meringue helps it take color.

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 — sweet paste at No. 136, apricot marmalade at No. 3675 — reveal it as a working professional's system rather than a book for domestic cooks. The almond, rum and egg-white batter here belongs to the same family as the financier and the visitandine, French pastry-shop preparations that grew up around the surplus of whites left when a kitchen used yolks for custards, sauces and glazes; a brigade that made hollandaise and crème anglaise all day had whites to spend, and this recipe spends twenty-one of them. The name is generally taken as a nod to Bordeaux, whose confectionery leans on almonds and on the rum that arrived through the port, though pastry names of this period were often decorative rather than geographic and no particular Bordelais original is documented.