No. 3366

Barcelonnettes

Pound eight ounces of almonds with a pound of sugar, four eggs and a gill of rum; make a very fine paste and put it in a vessel to add to it six egg-yolks, one at a time, beating them in until the whole becomes very light. Then sift in eight ounces of flour, mixing it in lightly, and lastly ten egg-whites whipped to a very stiff froth. Butter some small molds the shape of small channeled tartlets; glaze them over with icing sugar and fecula, half of each, and fill them three-quarters full with the preparation pushed in through a pocket; scatter chopped almonds over the tops, bestrew lightly with powdered sugar, and cook in a very slack oven; unmold as soon as done.

← No. 3365 Amarettes Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3367 Birds' Nests →

For the Modern Kitchen

An almond sponge in the French petit four manner, leavened entirely by egg. Ranhofer assumes a marble mortar, a coal range and a pastry cook's hands; the method translates directly to a food processor and a stand mixer.

The hinge: keep it lightThe whole structure depends on air beaten into the yolks and folded in with the whites. Once the flour goes in, fold with a spatula only, and fold the stiff whites in in three additions. Overmix and you get a dense, damp almond cake rather than a petit four.
Pounding the almondsBlanched almonds with the sugar, eggs and rum in a food processor gives the "very fine paste" without the mortar. The sugar and liquid keep the almonds from oiling; never grind them dry on their own.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is a substantial amount of rum for the batter.
FeculaPotato starch. Cornstarch behaves the same way here. It is mixed half and half with confectioners' sugar and dusted into the buttered molds so the cakes release cleanly and take on a fine dry skin.
A very slack ovenSomewhere in the region of 275-300F. These are meant to bake pale, barely coloured beyond the almonds on top. At 350F the exteriors set before the centres rise.
Molds and the pocket"Small channeled tartlets" are fluted tartlet or barquette tins, roughly 2 inches across; mini brioche or madeleine tins substitute well. The "pocket" is a piping bag, which fills them evenly to three-quarters without knocking out the air.
TimingThe recipe gives none. At 275-300F small molds take about 15 to 20 minutes; the cakes are done when the tops spring back and a tester comes out clean. Unmold at once, as directed, or the steam softens the sugared crust.
YieldEight ounces of almonds, a pound of sugar, eight ounces of flour, plus four whole eggs, six extra yolks and ten extra whites (about fourteen eggs in all) is a professional batch, perhaps 60 to 80 small cakes. Quartering it is sensible for a home oven.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its petits fours chapter is essentially a French pastry repertoire transplanted whole to Manhattan. Barcelonnettes belong to the large family of almond-and-egg petits fours built on the same principle as the amarettes that precede them on the page and the birds' nests that follow: ground almonds, sugar, a great many eggs, very little flour, and a slack oven. The name is generally taken to refer to Barcelonnette, the town in the Ubaye valley of the French Alps, though Ranhofer, in keeping with the book's habit, gives no explanation of the naming at all. Nineteenth-century pastry chefs attached place names to small cakes freely, and the connection between the dish and the town is traditional rather than documented. What the recipe does show plainly is the scale of a Delmonico's pastry department: four whole eggs, six yolks and ten whites, and a yield running to sixty or eighty two-inch cakes.