No. 3401

Vanilla Sticks

Batons a la Vanille

Beat one pound of almonds with two pounds and three-quarters of icing sugar and a quarter of a pound of vanilla sugar (No. 3165), adding seven beaten egg-whites; obtain a very fine paste. Let it stand for a few hours in a cool place, then roll it out with the pin to three-eighths of an inch in thickness; cover the top with a layer of royal icing (No. 101). Cut this flat into bands two and a quarter inches wide, and these into sticks five-eighths of an inch long; lay them at once on a baking sheet covered with paper; cook in a very slack oven.

← No. 3400 Cherry Sticks Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3402 Apricot Tartlets →

For the Modern Kitchen

A stiff almond-and-sugar paste, iced and dried rather than baked, from Ranhofer's petits fours chapter. The whole thing hinges on the oven being barely warm — these are meant to set and dry pale, not to color.

"A very slack oven"Conventionally rendered as something like 250-275F, and some cooks would go lower. At anything approaching a normal baking heat the royal icing browns and cracks and the almond paste weeps oil. The recipe gives no time; judge by the icing setting firm and matte rather than by color.
Scale it downAs written this is over four pounds of paste — a professional batch for a Delmonico's pastry counter. A quarter of the quantities (4 oz almonds, 11 oz icing sugar, 1 oz vanilla sugar, scant 2 egg whites) gives a manageable home batch of perhaps 50-70 sticks.
"Beat one pound of almonds"Blanched almonds pounded in a mortar to a smooth paste. Almond flour worked in a food processor with some of the sugar is the modern equivalent; the sugar keeps the nuts from turning to butter.
Vanilla sugarRanhofer cross-references his own vanilla sugar at No. 3165, which by the usual method of the period is sugar pounded with vanilla beans and sieved. Bury two split pods in a jar of caster sugar for a week, or grind a pod with a few spoonfuls of sugar and sift out the fibers. Extract is not a substitute here — the recipe needs the bulk of dry sugar.
The proportions are correctThree parts sugar to one of almonds looks wrong to anyone used to marzipan, but this is a macaroon-type paste that dries crisp. Do not reduce the sugar; the structure depends on it.
The rest is not optionalSeveral hours in a cool place lets the sugar dissolve and the paste firm up. Rolled straight away it sticks to the pin and to itself, and the cut edges slump.
The dimensionsThe sheet is cut into bands 2¼ inches wide, then the bands crosswise every 5/8 inch; Ranhofer calls the 5/8 inch cut the "length," but the finished piece measures 2¼ inches by 5/8 inch. Roll on a surface dusted with icing sugar, and ice before cutting as instructed, so each piece keeps a clean iced top.
Royal icing and paperNo. 101 is Ranhofer's royal icing, egg white worked with sifted icing sugar, spread thin with a palette knife. The "paper" of the original is best replaced with parchment; these stick badly to a bare sheet.
KeepingFully dried, they hold two to three weeks in a tin between layers of paper. They soften quickly in humid air.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that house's repertoire, French in structure and vocabulary down to the numbered cross-references. Bâtons — sticks or batons — are a standard shape in the French petits fours secs family: an almond paste rolled flat, glazed with royal icing, cut into fingers and dried in a cooling oven. They belong to the run of near-identical small recipes around No. 3400 (cherry sticks, apricot tartlets, and so on) that a pastry department would turn out in quantity for the mignardise tray at the end of a long service.