No. 3350

Marquis' Hats

Chapeaux de Marquis

Make a paste with a pound of flour, six ounces of butter, eight ounces of sugar, two whole eggs, two yolks and the peel of a lemon; leave rest in a cool place; roll it out into a flat one-eighth of an inch thick and from this cut channeled rounds two inches in diameter; egg the edges of them all and in the center lay a three-quarter inch diameter ball made of almond paste (No. 125), incorporating into it as much crushed macaroons soaked in maraschino; lift up the edges on the three corners and fasten them together on top of the balls; egg over and leave for half an hour in a cool spot, then bake in a slack oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A rich almond-filled tea cake from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), shaped like a three-cornered hat. The pastry is essentially a sweet pâte sablée, and the whole thing hinges on temperature: warm dough will not hold the folded corners.

The dough in modern measureA pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups (450 g); 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks (170 g); 8 oz sugar is about 1 1/4 cups (225 g). With two whole eggs and two yolks it makes a stiff, short paste rather than a cookie dough.
"Slack oven"Slack is the coolest working range, usually taken as around 300F or a little below. These are pale, sandy cakes, not browned ones, so bake gently and judge by color rather than by a fixed time.
Channeled roundsA fluted (crinkle-edged) 2-inch cutter. The three-cornered shape comes from drawing three points of the round up over the ball and fastening them on top.
Almond paste, No. 125Ranhofer cross-references his own almond paste recipe, which is a pounded almond-and-sugar paste. Commercial almond paste can stand in; marzipan is sweeter and softer. Avoid canned almond pie filling.
Macaroons means amarettiMacaroons means almond macaroons -- in 1894 a macaroon was a crisp almond biscuit, not a coconut haystack. Crush almond macaroons (amaretti will do) and moisten them with the liqueur until they just clump.
MaraschinoThe clear cherry-kernel liqueur (Luxardo, Maraska), not the syrup from a jar of dyed cherries. A tablespoon or two is enough to damp the crumbs without making the filling loose.
Two rests, both necessaryChill the paste until firm before rolling, and chill the shaped hats the specified half hour before baking. Skipping the second rest is what makes the corners unseal in the oven; pinch the three seams together firmly, with a little egg wash as glue.
Egg wash twiceOnce on the cut edges, which acts as the adhesive, and again over the assembled cake. The recipe says only "egg," without specifying whole egg or yolk.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of the restaurant's kitchen, and its pastry chapters draw heavily on the French repertoire in which he trained. Chapeaux de marquis—marquis' hats—appears to be named for the shape it takes: the three lifted corners suggest a tricorne hat, though the recipe itself says nothing about the origin of the name. Three-cornered folded pastries filled with a ball of almond paste turn up in more than one European baking tradition. Its place here, among dozens of small tea cakes, reflects how a Gilded Age restaurant worked—an afternoon or supper service needed variety in quantity, and a single sweet paste could be cut, filled and folded into several differently named things.