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Frangipane
Place in a saucepan four egg yolks, two ounces sifted flour, half pint cold milk, two ounces granulated sugar and one ounce good butter. Sharply mix with a whisk for two minutes. Set on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil place in a bowl and let cool off. Add two ounces peeled and finely chopped almonds and a tablespoon orange-flower water. Arrange a thin layer of feuilletage, to entirely cover a pie plate, neatly press around the edges, trim off any superfluous paste, lightly wet the edges. Cut out a round piece feuilletage half an inch wide and place it all around the edges of the pie plate; lightly egg the border; pour the preparation in the centre of the plate, spread well, make a few light incisions around the ring, then set to bake in the oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, dredge a little powdered sugar over and serve.
This is the older, lighter frangipane: a pastry cream enriched with chopped almonds rather than the creamed butter-and-almond paste most modern recipes mean by the word. A few of the measures and one silent omission need filling in.
- FeuilletageFrench for puff pastry. All-butter frozen puff, thawed and rolled out, will line the plate; the recipe does not give a plate size, and you may need a second sheet for the half-inch collar.
- The missing ovenNo temperature is given. Puff pastry with a wet filling wants a hot start: 400-425F is the usual range for a tart of this kind, and 25 minutes at that heat is consistent with the instruction.
- Weights, not cupsTwo ounces of flour is a scant half cup; two ounces of granulated sugar is a generous quarter cup; one ounce of butter is two tablespoons. Half a pint of milk is one cup. Weighing the flour matters here, since the whole set of the cream depends on it.
- Cold-start custardEverything goes into the pan cold and is whisked before heat is applied, which is why it works without lumps. Stir as it heats and take it off the moment it boils, as the recipe directs.
- The half-inch roundThis means a strip of pastry half an inch wide cut as a ring, laid on the wetted edge to build up a raised border. The "light incisions" are shallow cuts nicked into that border with a knife point.
- AlmondsBlanched almonds, skins slipped off, chopped fine but not to a paste; a food processor will take them to flour in seconds, so pulse. They and the orange-flower water go in only after the cream has cooled.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, but modern bottles vary enormously in strength. Taste after a teaspoon before committing the full tablespoon; the concentrated distillates can turn soapy.
- YieldThe recipe does not give a plate size; on a 9-inch plate, six to eight servings. Best the day it is baked, since the pastry base softens under the cream overnight.
Frangipane is generally traced to the Frangipani family of Rome, and specifically to a marquis said to have devised an almond-scented perfume for gloves that Parisian pastry cooks later imitated in the kitchen. The story is traditional rather than documented, and the tradition dates the marquis inconsistently, but the name has attached itself to almond fillings in French pastry since at least the eighteenth century. What is notable here is the form: this is crème frangipane in its older sense, a pastry cream lightened and flavoured with chopped almonds and orange-flower water, rather than the dense butter-sugar-almond mixture that carries the name in most kitchens now. The International Cook Book came out of the French professional tradition as it was practised in American hotel and restaurant kitchens, where a cook would have been expected to know what feuilletage was and how hot to set the oven without being told.