No. 3361

Parisian Tuiles

Tuiles Parisiennes

Beat four egg-whites to a stiff froth, add seven ounces of sugar, mixing together to form a meringue; then put in one ounce of flour and seven ounces of shredded almonds. Dress this preparation with a fork into small inch and a half diameter balls on a buttered and floured sheet; flatten them to three-eighths of an inch with a fork and bake in a slack oven. As soon as done detach and bend on a roller.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A meringue-based almond wafer from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, given in weights and with no times or temperatures. The essentials translate cleanly.

The hinge: shape them hotTuiles set brittle within seconds of leaving the oven. Bake six to eight at a time and drape them over a rolling pin the moment they can be lifted; if a batch stiffens flat, three or four seconds back in the oven will soften it again.
"Slack oven"The coolest working range of a range oven, usually taken as somewhere around 300-325F, though period usage varies. These are meant to dry and colour only at the edges, not brown through; the recipe gives no time, and in practice that is likely to be a matter of ten minutes or so, watched rather than timed.
Weights into cupsSeven ounces of sugar is about one cup; one ounce of flour is a scant quarter cup; seven ounces of shredded almonds is roughly two cups of sliced almonds. Weighing is more reliable here, since the batter is almost entirely sugar and nuts.
"Shredded almonds"Nineteenth-century usage for blanched almonds cut lengthwise into thin slivers or slices, not the fine grated shreds of coconut. Commercial sliced almonds are the closest modern equivalent; slivered works but gives a coarser tile.
The meringue is not foldedSugar is beaten into the whites to make a firm meringue, then flour and almonds are worked in. Expect the mixture to slacken considerably once the nuts go in; that is correct, and it is what allows the discs to spread.
The sheetButtered and floured, as the recipe directs. Parchment or a silicone mat gives the same result with far less breakage, and the wafers lift more cleanly for shaping.
Size and spacingInch-and-a-half mounds flattened to three-eighths of an inch spread to roughly three inches. Leave two inches between them and take the number per sheet down rather than up, since crowded tuiles fuse and cannot be curved.
YieldAbout 30 to 36 wafers. They keep a few days in a tin with a tight lid and go limp quickly in humid weather.

A Little History

Tuile is simply French for roof tile, and the name describes the finished shape: a thin wafer bent while warm over a rolling pin so it dries in the curve of a clay tile. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of that French-trained repertoire, and this recipe sits among the tea cakes and small wafers. The neighbouring recipes here, cigarette waffles and the like, are built on the same principle: a batter with almost no flour in it, baked thin enough to be pliable for a few seconds and brittle thereafter.