No. 40

Almond Cream

Creme d'Amandes

Pound one pound of almonds with one pound of loaf sugar, slowly adding four small eggs and some orange flower water. When the almonds have become a fine paste, take them from the mortar and transfer to a vessel, incorporating in six eggs, one at the time and one pound of fresh butter softened and divided in small pats.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a pastry filling rather than a dessert cream — the almond paste that goes into tarts, pithiviers and jalousies, and it is meant to be baked in a crust, not spooned from the bowl. Ranhofer gives quantities for a professional pastry department, so the first adjustment is scale.

Scale it downAs written this makes roughly four pounds of filling. A quarter of the recipe — 4 oz almonds, 4 oz sugar, 4 oz butter, and 2 to 3 eggs total — fills one 9-inch tart, so the whole batch would fill about four.
The egg countTen eggs in all: four small ones worked into the almonds in the mortar, then six more beaten in afterward. Eggs of the period are generally reckoned to have run smaller than today's large egg, and the recipe itself specifies that the first four are small, so eight to nine large eggs is a reasonable substitution for the full batch — hold the last one back until you see the consistency.
Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken or crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent; because it goes into a mortar with wet almonds, no grinding is required.
Skip the mortarA food processor does in two minutes what the pestle did in twenty. Grind blanched almonds with the sugar to a fine dry meal first, then add the eggs — the sugar keeps the nuts from oiling. Almond flour plus sugar is an acceptable shortcut, though the texture is smoother and less interesting.
Blanch the almondsRanhofer assumes almonds already blanched and skinned; nut skins leave the cream speckled and slightly bitter. Pour boiling water over shelled almonds, stand one minute, and slip the skins off.
Orange flower waterStill sold as orange blossom water in Middle Eastern groceries and baking aisles. It is potent — about a teaspoon per pound of almonds. Modern brands vary in strength, so add it in stages and taste.
Keep the butter soft, not meltedThis is the hinge. The butter goes in as small pats at cool room temperature and is beaten in gradually; melted butter or cold butter both break the emulsion and the filling weeps oil in the oven. If it splits, beat in a spoonful of the almond mixture to bring it back.
It must be bakedThe mixture is raw as it leaves the bowl. Ranhofer gives no oven instruction here, but for a standard tart this sort of filling is baked in the pastry in a moderate oven, around 350–375°F, until the centre is set and lightly puffed, 30 to 40 minutes. The uncooked mixture keeps three days covered in the refrigerator and freezes well.

A Little History

Crème d'amandes is one of the foundation preparations of French pastry, and Charles Ranhofer — chef at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years — put it among the elementary methods of The Epicurean (1894). It belongs to the same family as frangipane, the almond filling whose name is traditionally linked to the Frangipani family, though the story is folk tradition rather than documented history; in professional usage the two names are often blurred, though frangipane properly includes pastry cream while this version is straight almond, sugar, egg and butter. The orange flower water is the tell of an older palate: distilled floral waters were widely used to flavour almond work long before vanilla extract became cheap and universal, and they survive in the same role in North African and Levantine baking today.