No. 3378

Lemon Crowns

Couronnes au Citron

Prepare a very fine paste with ten ounces of almonds, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, a part of it flavored with lemon (No. 3165) and five egg-whites; lay this paste on a buttered and floured baking sheet in small crowns an inch and three-quarters in diameter, pushing them through a pocket with a small three-eighths of an inch channeled socket; leave to dry in the heater for four to five hours, and when ready to cook fill the centers with frangipane cream with vanilla (No. 44); dredge over this cream with chopped almonds and cook in a hot oven. Gum over as soon as done, leave to cool and detach from the paper.

← No. 3377 Lady Fingers Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3379 Macaroons →

For the Modern Kitchen

A piped almond-macaroon ring filled with pastry cream, from the petits fours chapter of Ranhofer's The Epicurean. The hinge is the long air-drying: the piped rings must form a dry skin before they go anywhere near heat, or they slump and the filling runs out.

The pasteTen ounces blanched almonds, twelve ounces sugar and five egg whites. Grind the almonds with part of the sugar in a food processor until genuinely fine, then work in the whites; a coarse grind gives a paste that will not hold a piped edge.
"Flavored with lemon (No. 3165)"The cross-reference points to another entry not reproduced here, most likely a lemon sugar — sugar rubbed hard against the zest of lemons until it is damp and yellow, then dried and sifted. Zest finely grated into part of the sugar does the same job.
"A pocket with a channeled socket"A piping bag with a small fluted or star tip, roughly 3/8 inch across. Pipe closed rings about 1 3/4 inches in diameter, which is small — these are petits fours, not pastries.
Drying in "the heater"The hot closet or plate-warmer above a coal range: a gentle warmth well below baking heat, though the recipe names no temperature. A modern oven set to its lowest setting with the door ajar, or simply four to five hours at room temperature in a dry kitchen, will crust the surface equally well.
The frangipane cream (No. 44)In Ranhofer this is a pastry cream enriched with butter and crushed macaroons or almonds, not the raw almond-butter frangipane of a modern tart. Any thick vanilla pastry cream, piped cold into the centers, behaves the same.
"A hot oven"No temperature or time is given; something in the 400-425F range, and briefly, until the chopped almonds color and the rings are set. Almond-and-sugar pastes scorch fast at this heat, so watch rather than time.
"Gum over"Brushing the hot cakes with gum arabic dissolved in water, the standard 19th-century gloss. Warmed apricot glaze or a thin sugar syrup gives the same shine.
Paper versus buttered sheetThe recipe says to butter and flour the sheet, then to detach the cakes from paper. Use parchment throughout; sugar-heavy pastes weld themselves to bare metal.
YieldNot stated. At 1 3/4 inches this quantity of paste makes a large batch — several dozen crowns — served as one item among several on a petits fours tray.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's kitchen, and its petits fours chapter reads like an inventory of the French pastry repertoire he had trained in before emigrating. Couronne is simply French for crown, the name describing the piped ring rather than any occasion; the technique — an almond-and-egg-white paste of the macaroon family, piped, dried to a skin, then filled and baked — is the same one that yields the macaroons of the very next entry. The cross-referencing is characteristic: Ranhofer assumed a brigade with lemon sugar and frangipane cream already standing ready, so the recipe is less a set of instructions than an assembly note for cooks who knew the components. Gum arabic glaze, now largely gone from home kitchens, was the period's ordinary means of putting a lasting gloss on small cakes destined for a display tray.