No. 3351

Milanese

Milanaises

Put four ounces of sugar in a vessel with two egg-yolks and two whole eggs; beat together for a moment to obtain a light preparation, then add two heaping spoonfuls of powdered almonds, four ounces of melted butter, four spoonfuls of finely cut-up citron and half a pound of flour, stirring together well to obtain a smooth paste; leave it in a cool place for half an hour. Roll it out with the rolling-pin to a quarter of an inch in thickness and cut this into bands, each one two and a half inches wide; brush each one with egg-yolks and trace lines on top with a fork; bestrew lightly with chopped almonds and cut them across in rectangles five-eighths of an inch thick; lay them on a buttered sheet and bake in a quick oven.

← No. 3350 Marquis' Hats Tea Cakes No. 3352 Nantes →

For the Modern Kitchen

A stiff almond-and-citron butter dough, rolled, glazed and cut into small bars — a dry tea biscuit in the French pâtisserie manner rather than a soft cookie. Ranhofer weighs the important things and leaves the spoonfuls vague.

Weights, translatedFour ounces sugar is about ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated; four ounces butter is one stick; half a pound of flour is roughly 1¾ cups scooped and levelled. Weigh the flour if you can — the dough should be firm enough to roll without extra dusting.
SpoonfulsRanhofer's unqualified "spoonful" is generally taken to be a tablespoon. Two heaping tablespoons of powdered almonds is roughly 25–35 g of almond flour; four tablespoons of citron is roughly 50–60 g diced.
Powdered almondsBlanched almond flour, not almond meal with the skins in, and not almond extract. If you grind your own, pulse with a spoonful of the sugar to keep the almonds from turning to paste.
CitronCandied citron peel — the thick-rinded Citrus medica, sold in blocks or diced at holiday time. Chop it finer than you think necessary; large pieces tear the thin dough when it is rolled. Candied orange peel is the nearest substitute.
A quick ovenUsually reckoned at about 400–425°F. At that heat these bars want roughly 8–12 minutes and want watching — the egg-yolk glaze and the chopped almonds colour well before the biscuit is done through.
Chilling is not optionalHalf an hour in a cool place lets the melted butter set. Warm dough will not take a clean fork line and the strips will spread into each other on the sheet.
Reading the cutting instructionsRoll to ¼ inch, cut into bands 2½ inches wide, glaze and mark the whole band, then cut across it at ⅝-inch intervals. The "five-eighths of an inch thick" refers to the width of each finished bar, not its height.
YieldDepends on how thin you roll and how much trim you lose; bars 2½ inches by ⅝ inch from half a pound of flour will run to several dozen. They keep a week in a tin and are meant to be dry and snappy, not chewy.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its tea-cake chapter is essentially a French petits fours secs repertoire transplanted whole: Nantes, Marquis' hats, Milanaises, each a small keeping biscuit built on butter, egg and ground almonds. The name most likely follows the pâtisserie convention of labelling a shape or formula after a city rather than recording any Milanese origin — French kitchens of the period turned out Génoises, Napolitains, Milanais and Nantais, though how far each name reflected a real geographic claim is hard to say. What the recipe does show plainly is that candied citron was among the ingredients a nineteenth-century American professional kitchen kept to hand for an everyday biscuit served with tea.