No. 3379

Macaroons

Macarons

Shell and skin one pound of almonds; pound them with two pounds of sugar, having part of it flavored with vanilla (No. 3165) and ten egg-whites; make a smooth but not too fine paste; lay it in a vessel to beat with a spatula until it acquires a body. Have a pocket provided with a half-inch diameter socket and push through it macaroons an inch in size, laying them on a paper-covered baking sheet. Moisten the surface with a slightly dampened cloth and cook in a slow oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's macaroon is the plain French macaron of the 1890s: almonds, sugar and raw whites worked to a paste, piped and baked dry. A few of his terms and proportions need translating before you start.

Skinning the almonds"Shell and skin" means blanch: pour boiling water over the almonds, let them stand a minute, and slip off the skins. Dry them thoroughly before pounding or the paste will be slack.
Pounding, and the modern substituteA food processor stands in for the mortar, but grind the almonds with a good share of the sugar from the start — sugar keeps the nuts from turning to butter. Ranhofer wants a paste that is smooth "but not too fine"; a little texture is correct.
The proportionsOne pound almonds to two pounds sugar is twice the sugar by weight, much sweeter than most modern versions; sugar-heavy proportions of this kind are common in older macaroon recipes. Ten egg whites is roughly 10-11 oz, about 1 1/4 cups.
Vanilla sugarHis No. 3165 is presumably vanilla-flavored sugar. Substitute a scraped bean's seeds rubbed into the sugar, or a teaspoon of extract, added with the whites.
Beating for bodyThe beating with a spatula after mixing is what Ranhofer means by "acquires a body": it gives the paste enough structure to hold a piped shape. Work it until it stiffens slightly and falls in ribbons.
"A pocket provided with a socket"A pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain tip. Pipe rounds about an inch across, spaced well apart, on parchment-lined sheets.
The dampened clothWiping the tops with a barely damp cloth smooths the piping points and helps produce the glossy crackled crust. Do not soak them.
Slow ovenAround 300F. Bake roughly 18-25 minutes until set and lightly colored but still soft within. If the paper sticks, slide the sheet of parchment onto a lightly moistened surface for a minute and the macaroons will release.
YieldThe full batch is over three and a half pounds of paste, a professional quantity — on the order of a hundred one-inch macaroons. It scales down proportionally, though ten whites do not divide neatly.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is written for a kitchen brigade rather than a household: the quantities are professional, the cross-references assume you have already made the vanilla sugar. Almond macaroons themselves are far older than the book — they are often said to have begun in Italian convent baking and to have reached France by the sixteenth century, though this is tradition rather than documented history, and towns such as Nancy and Amiens each kept their own version. What Ranhofer describes is the plain unfilled shell, the ancestor of the sandwiched Parisian macaron rather than the coconut macaroon that later took over the name in America. Its position here among the petits fours is telling: a variation on a paste that recurs across the section, meant to be arranged on a tray at the end of a long service.