No. 3623

Almond Paste Candied

Pate d'Amandes au Candi

Shell and peel fourteen ounces of sweet almonds; leave to soak in fresh water for three hours, then pound to a pulp with a little water and kirsch, half of each, just sufficient to moisten the almonds so they do not oil. Cook a pound of sugar to "crack" (No. 171), in a round bottom sugar pan, mix the almonds in with the sugar and dry them for a few moments over a slow fire.

If for chocolate almond paste add a little grated chocolate or else partly dissolved chocolate. White almond paste is colored with vegetal colorings (No. 172). Roll this paste to three-eighths of an inch in thickness and cut it up in small fanciful patterns; dry them in the heater and when sufficiently dry put them to candy (No. 3640); they can be flavored with vanilla or any other flavoring.

← No. 3622 Parisian, White and Pistachio Nougat Confectionery No. 3624 Gum Paste →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's marzipan is built the confectioner's way -- almonds pounded wet, then bound with sugar cooked to a specific stage -- and finished with a crystal coat rather than a glaze. Two things decide whether it works: the water in the almond paste and the temperature of the sugar.

"Crack" means 300-310F"Crack" means the hard end of the sugar-boiling scale -- generally reckoned at about 290-310F (143-154C) on a candy thermometer, though Ranhofer gives the degree by number (No. 171) rather than by temperature. Cook the pound of sugar with a little water to that reading, without stirring, and have the almonds ready to go in at once.
Why the almonds must not oilThis is the hinge. Pounding blanched almonds dry releases their oil and the paste breaks into a greasy mass that will not bind properly with sugar. The half-water, half-kirsch mixture keeps the pulp slack -- and flavours it; add only enough to moisten, a tablespoon or two at a time.
A food processor works, with carePulse in short bursts with the liquid already added, scraping down often, and stop while the paste is still slightly gritty. Continuous running heats the nuts and produces almond butter.
Blanching and soaking"Shell and peel" means taking off the shells and then the skins, most easily by a brief blanching in boiling water so the skins slip off. The recipe then calls for a three-hour soak in fresh water, which plumps the kernels and plausibly helps them grind wet rather than oily; the book treats it as part of the method.
The sugar panAn unlined copper sugar pan with a rounded bottom conducts fast and has no corners for crystals to seed in. Any heavy, straight-sided saucepan will serve; avoid thin pans, which scorch sugar at hard-crack temperatures.
"Dry them in the heater"The heater is the warming closet of a nineteenth-century range, a low and gentle heat; the book gives no temperature. A domestic oven set to its lowest setting with the door ajar, or a dehydrator, does the same job. The cut shapes want to form a dry skin before they are candied.
Candying is a crystal coatNo. 3640 is the sugar-candying process: the dried shapes are suspended in a saturated syrup and left undisturbed for many hours while fine sugar crystals grow over them. It gives a thin sparkling shell, not a poured fondant. Skipping it leaves you with plain cut marzipan, which is perfectly good.
Colouring"Vegetal colorings" points to Ranhofer's own list of colourings at No. 172; such colours were largely plant-based, though confectioners' palettes of the day also included animal-derived ones such as cochineal. Use ordinary modern food colouring, gel for preference, since water-based liquid loosens the paste.
YieldFourteen ounces of almonds to a pound of sugar gives roughly 2 lb of paste. Rolled to the specified three-eighths inch, that is a large tray of small cut shapes -- easily 60 to 80 pieces, which is why the book assumes a hotel pastry department.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's operating manual, confectionery department included. Almond paste of this kind is the French pâte d'amandes, cousin to German marzipan, and the sugar-boiling stages Ranhofer references by number -- thread, pearl, blow, feather, crack, caramel -- were the professional confectioner's vocabulary long before thermometers were standard in kitchens; a cook judged them by how the syrup behaved between wetted fingers or when blown through a wire loop. Kirsch with almonds is a pairing that runs through Alsatian, German and Swiss pastry work. Candying the finished shapes, rather than simply glazing them, was a slow overnight process, and the crystal shell kept them from going sticky.