No. 3388

Strawberry Macaroons

Macarons a la Fraise

Pound together one pound of almonds, two pounds of sugar, five egg-whites and half a gill of strawberry spirit; make of it a plain macaroon paste; put this in a vessel and add a few drops of carmine and four very stiffly beaten egg-whites. Lay the paste through a pocket into small oval-shaped macaroons an inch and three-quarters long on a sheet of paper; dampen with a wet cloth and cook them in a slack oven; remove the paper from the baking sheet and leave the macaroons to get cold. Detach them from the paper and stick them two by two with strawberry preserves.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's macaroon is the Parisian shell type — ground almonds, sugar, egg white — piped in ovals and sandwiched with jam. The proportions are professional-scale and the oven is cooler than most modern macaron recipes.

Halve the batch, or quarter itOne pound of almonds with two pounds of sugar and nine whites in total yields something like 150 to 200 shells, or 75 to 100 sandwiched pairs. A quarter batch (4 oz almonds, 8 oz sugar, roughly one white in the paste and one beaten) is a sensible home quantity.
A slack ovenSlack is usually given as roughly 250-300F, the coolest working heat of a coal range. The point is to set and dry the shells without colouring them, since the carmine tint is the whole effect. The recipe gives no baking time; at that heat expect a considerably longer bake than a hotter modern one.
Half a gill of strawberry spiritA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons. "Strawberry spirit" here means an alcoholic strawberry essence or eau-de-vie de fraise, not syrup; at that volume it is carrying most of the flavour. If you substitute a modern concentrated extract, use far less and make up the liquid with an extra white or the paste will be dry.
CarmineCochineal-based red colouring, sold to nineteenth-century confectioners as a liquid or powder. It is still available as carmine or E120, though it is not vegetarian; any strong red food colour serves. "A few drops" is right — the shells should read pale pink.
Pound togetherThe mortar work is done in a food processor: pulse blanched almonds with a good part of the sugar so the nuts do not turn oily, then work in the whites and spirit. Almond flour with the sugar sifted through it also works and is less risky.
Through a pocketA pocket is a piping bag. Plain round tip, ovals about 1 3/4 inches long as specified, well spaced.
Dampen with a wet clothWringing a damp cloth over the piped shells, or brushing them lightly with water, softens the surface so it cracks less in the oven. Ranhofer bakes on paper sheets; parchment does the same job.
Removing the paperSliding the paper off the hot baking sheet stops carryover browning on the bases. Let the shells go completely cold before peeling — warm ones tear. If they stick, a little water run under the paper and a few minutes' wait will loosen them.
FillingStrawberry preserves, not a buttercream. A thick, well-set jam holds the pairs together; a loose one will soak the shells within an hour.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its petits fours chapter is essentially a working pastry department's repertoire written down. These macarons a la fraise belong to the Parisian tradition of almond-and-egg-white shells sandwiched in pairs, a style conventionally traced to the early twentieth century, so that this 1894 entry is itself evidence rather than a late example; Ranhofer nonetheless assumed his readers could execute it without much hand-holding: "a plain macaroon paste," which points back to his own basic macaroon entries a few numbers earlier. The carmine is worth noting as a period detail: cochineal, made from dried scale insects imported chiefly from Mexico and the Canaries, was the standard red of nineteenth-century kitchens and remained so until coal-tar dyes displaced it in the decades after this book appeared.