No. 3346

Espagnolettes

Break five eggs in a basin, add three-quarters of a pound of sugar and beat together on a slow fire to have the whole very light, then put in the grated peel of a lemon and three-quarters of a pound of very dry sifted flour. Pour this into a pocket and with it dress the preparation on a buttered and floured baking sheet in rounds one inch in diameter; dredge the tops with coarsely chopped almonds; turn the baking sheet over quickly to remove the surplus of almonds, bestrew with sugar and bake in a very slack oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A piped sponge biscuit in the ladyfinger family, leavened by nothing but beaten egg. Ranhofer assumes a professional who knows what a warm whisking bowl and a slack oven feel like; the numbers below fill in what he left unsaid.

The hinge: beat warm, not hot"On a slow fire" means whisking the eggs and sugar over gentle heat (or a pan of hot water) until they are warm to the touch and very light, holding a thick ribbon off the whisk. There is no chemical leavening here, so if the foam collapses the biscuits bake flat and hard. Take the bowl off the heat and keep whisking until it cools before the flour goes in.
Weights in cupsThree-quarters of a pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups; three-quarters of a pound of flour is roughly 3 cups, and nearer 3 1/2 cups once sifted. Weighing is far more reliable here, as the batter's stiffness decides whether the piped rounds hold or spread.
"A pocket"Ranhofer's poche is a piping bag. Use a plain round tip of about 1/2 inch and pipe domes an inch across, spaced generously — they spread and puff.
Fold, do not stirThe flour is added by hand in two or three additions, cut and folded through. Overworking after the flour goes in deflates the foam and toughens the crumb.
A very slack ovenSlack means low: roughly 275–300°F. These should dry and set to a pale blond, not colour. A moderate oven browns the almonds and sugar before the interior sets.
The almond and sugar trickDredge the piped rounds heavily with chopped almonds, then tip and rap the sheet so the excess falls away, leaving only what has stuck to the wet batter. The sugar strewn after gives the crackled, pearled top. Sanding or pearl sugar works better than fine granulated, which dissolves.
Buttered and floured sheetParchment does the same job with less fuss and makes the fragile bases easier to lift. If you butter and flour, let the biscuits cool a minute or two on the sheet before moving them.
Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; expect several dozen small cakes, possibly more. They are meant to be crisp and dry; stored airtight they keep well for a week or more, and go soft in humid air — a few minutes in a low oven revives them.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summation of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its tea-cake chapter is essentially a French pastry repertoire transcribed for an American kitchen. Espagnolette is a diminutive of espagnol(e), "Spanish"; the culinary name appears to be traditional in nineteenth-century French pâtisserie rather than descriptive, and the biscuit itself belongs to the vast family of biscuits à la cuiller — whisked egg-and-sugar batters piped and dried in a cool oven, of which the ladyfinger is the best-known survivor. In the fine pastry of this period a warm-whisked egg foam was a common way to lift a sweet batter. The almond-and-sugar topping places these squarely in the world of the afternoon tea table and the petit-four tray, where they would have appeared alongside the other small cakes Ranhofer numbers around them.