No. 3386

Hazel-Nut Macaroons

Macarons de Noisettes

Lay some hazel-nuts on a raised-edge baking sheet and roast them in the oven; as soon as done pour them on a large sieve, rub well to remove their skins and leave to cool. Crush three-quarters of a pound of these nuts and a quarter of a pound of almonds with two pounds of sugar and eight or ten egg-whites; make a paste the same as for plain macaroons. Put this into a vessel and stir well to give it body; then push it through a pocket on paper, dampen with a cloth and bake in a warm oven.

← No. 3385 Fancy Macaroons Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3387 Souffle Macaroons →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a hotel pastry department, so the batch is enormous and the instructions assume you already know the plain macaroon method from No. 3384. A few conversions and one point of technique make it workable.

Scale it downAs written this is 1 lb of nuts to 2 lb of sugar plus 8-10 egg whites, a very large batch. Quartering it (3 oz hazelnuts, 1 oz almonds, 8 oz sugar, 2-3 egg whites) gives a manageable tray or two.
"A pocket"The poche is a piping bag. A plain round tip of about 1/2 inch is right for petits fours; the paste is stiff and will need firm pressure.
Oven temperaturesRoast the hazelnuts at about 350F for 10-12 minutes, until the skins crack and loosen. For the macaroons the recipe says only "a warm oven" and gives no figure; something gentle, in the region of 300-325F for 15-20 minutes until set and pale gold, suits this paste. Higher heat colors the nut paste before the centers dry.
Skinning the nutsRubbing hot nuts in a coarse sieve works, but a folded kitchen towel is faster. Some skin always clings; a little is no harm, a lot makes the paste bitter and gray.
Crushing the nuts"Crush" here would have meant a mortar, and the sugar helps keep the nuts from turning to butter. In a food processor, pulse the nuts with the sugar in stages rather than running it continuously, then work in the whites.
"Stir well to give it body"This is the hinge. The paste is beaten by hand in the bowl until it stiffens and holds a ridge — underworked paste spreads into flat wafers instead of piping into domes. Beat a minute or two past the point where it looks ready.
Dampening with a clothA wrung-out cloth passed lightly over the piped tops moistens the surface, which keeps it from crusting too early and helps the characteristic glossy, crackled top. Period bakers are also recorded wetting the underside of the paper after baking to release the macaroons; on modern parchment they lift off cleanly once cool.
Sugar ratioTwo pounds of sugar to one of nuts is very sweet by current taste. Reducing the sugar changes the structure, not just the flavor, so cut it by no more than a quarter if at all.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of a great restaurant kitchen, which is why this entry reads as a variation slotted between fancy macaroons and souffle macaroons rather than a standalone recipe. Nut macaroons of this type — ground nuts, sugar and egg white, no flour and no leavening — are far older than the sandwiched Parisian macaron most people now picture. The quarter-pound of almonds may well be there for texture as much as flavor, since almonds grind drier than the oilier hazelnut, though Ranhofer does not say so. Hazelnuts were sold as filberts in the American trade of the period, and nut macaroons of this family appear in French pastry manuals of the nineteenth century, made from a single base paste flavored with whichever nut was to hand.