No. 3391

Demidoff Marchpanes

Massepains Demidoff

Chop one pound of almonds finely and pass through a fine sieve; also three ounces of candied orange peel. Beat one pound of sugar with ten or eleven egg-whites and make it very light while heating gently, then add four ounces of flour, the orange peel and chopped almonds. Lay this preparation in inch and a quarter diameter rounds on a buttered and floured baking sheet; bestrew with chopped almonds, then with powdered sugar and let rest, and then bake in a very slack oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A warm-meringue almond cake baked very slowly, closer in spirit to a macaroon than to true marzipan. Two things decide the outcome: how light you get the sugar and whites while warming them, and how low you keep the oven.

The hinge: a warm meringueBeating the sugar and whites "while heating gently" points to working them in a bowl over barely simmering water, whisking constantly until thick and glossy; around 120F/50C is the usual modern target. That warmth helps dissolve the sugar and stabilise the foam; take it too hot and the whites begin to set and the batter turns grainy.
A very slack oven"Slack" is at the cool end of a nineteenth-century range; modern equivalences vary, but something in the region of 250-300F/120-150C is the usual reading, with "very slack" at the lower part of it. These are meant to dry out and stay pale, not colour, so judge by eye rather than by the clock, and leave the oven door slightly ajar if yours runs hot.
Almonds passed through a sieveChopped fine and passed through a fine sieve amounts to specifying a fine, uniform almond meal; the recipe does not say whether the almonds are blanched. Almond flour substitutes weight for weight. The almonds strewn on top are additional to the pound in the batter, so keep some coarsely chopped for the garnish.
Egg whitesTen or eleven whites comes to roughly 300-340 g, near enough ten or eleven modern large whites. Weigh rather than count if you can, since white size varies.
Candied orange peelThree ounces, minced as fine as you can get it, or it will tear the rounds as you form them. If your candied peel is wet, blot it and toss it in a little of the flour before folding in.
Shaping and the restAn inch and a quarter is about 3 cm, best piped from a plain tube onto a buttered and floured sheet or, more forgivingly, onto parchment. The rest after sugaring lets a thin skin form, the same principle that gives macarons their smooth top; 20-30 minutes at room temperature is enough.
YieldThe batter is bulky and will give a good many small cakes; count on several dozen, depending on how generously you portion them. They keep well in a tin for several days, and the chapter they sit in places them on a mixed petits fours tray rather than alone.

A Little History

Massepain in French kitchen usage of this period covered a family of almond-and-sugar confections rather than only the moulded almond paste that English "marchpane" or German marzipan suggests, and this formula — flour, whipped whites, a slack oven — sits at the sponge end of that family. The Demidoff name belonged to a wealthy Russian industrialist family whose members were conspicuous patrons of French luxury cooking in the nineteenth century, and their name was attached to a whole run of dishes; Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, reproduced much of that repertoire in The Epicurean (1894). The petits fours chapter it appears in reflects the way a grand restaurant of the 1880s and 1890s finished a meal: not one dessert but a tray of many small ones, the entries numbered and a few of them carrying a patron's name.