No. 3649

Filbert Candies

Bonbons d'Avelines en Conserve

Procure small plaster molds imitating hazel-nuts and fasten them to a ruler, then imprint them in starch. Peel six ounces of filberts and crush to form a very fine paste with a gill and a half of water. Cook a pound of sugar to "small crack" (No. 171), add the pounded nuts, stir well and cast it at once into the starch impressions; when these candies have sufficiently hardened in the starch to be able to be handled take them out, one by one, brush carefully and stand on a sieve to cool; they can afterward be dipped in cold crystallized syrup until completely coated with candy.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a starch-mogul candy: the mold is a bed of dry starch, stamped with plaster nut shapes, into which hot nut sugar is poured. The technique is straightforward once you accept that the starch is equipment, not an ingredient.

"Small crack"petit cassé, which on a modern thermometer corresponds to roughly 275-285F, just below hard crack; Ranhofer's No. 171 describes the stages by test rather than by degrees. Cook the pound of sugar with enough water to dissolve it and take it to that range before the nuts go in.
A gill and a halfThree-quarters of a cup of water, used only to let the nuts grind into a smooth paste. It is a large amount relative to 6 oz of nuts and it will slacken and cool the syrup, which is why the recipe insists on casting immediately.
FilbertsHazelnuts. Toast them at 350F for 10-12 minutes and rub off the skins in a towel; "peel" by hand is far slower. A food processor does in a minute what the original expects of a mortar.
The starch bedFill a shallow tray an inch deep with cornstarch dried in a 200F oven for an hour, level it, and press the molds in. Damp starch will not hold an impression and will steam when hot sugar hits it. Silicone molds work if you would rather skip the starch entirely.
The plaster modelsSmall plaster nut shapes fastened to a ruler let the confectioner stamp a whole row at once. Any hard, non-porous nut-shaped form fixed to a batten does the same job.
Cast at onceThis is the hinge. Nut paste in sugar at small crack sets very quickly and will not pour cleanly once it begins to thicken; work fast and in one continuous pass down each row.
Brushing offLeave the cast pieces in the starch several hours, or overnight, then lift them out and brush every trace of starch away with a soft pastry brush before dipping. Starch left on the surface will cloud the sugar coat.
Cold crystallized syrupA saturated sugar syrup held until it begins to throw crystals; the candies sit in it undisturbed in a warm, still place for several hours to grow a fine sugar shell. Any movement gives a coarse, patchy crust.
YieldAbout a pound and a half of finished candy. Store in a tin, layered with parchment.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 with the confectionery of a full professional kitchen included alongside the cooking, and this recipe belongs to that world rather than the domestic one: starch molding was an industrial confectioner's method, and the same starch trays and stamped-model boards were used in commercial sweet factories to cast jellies, fondants and liqueur cordials by the thousand. Aveline is the French for the cultivated hazelnut, and "filbert" is the older English name for the same nut, generally traced to St. Philibert's day in late August, when the crop ripens. The dish that results, a nut paste bound in hard sugar and finished with a grown crystal shell, takes the imitation-hazelnut shape typical of period bonbon making, where a sweet was expected to announce its flavor by its form.