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Gateau, Lyonnaise
Plunge three ounces sweet almonds and two beans bitter almonds in boiling water for five minutes. Drain, peel and pound them in a mortar to a paste with the white of one egg. Remove and place in a bowl; add two tablespoons Jamaica rum and two ounces granulated sugar; briskly stir with a wooden spoon for five minutes, then add one raw egg; mix well for one minute, then add one egg yolk; mix again, then add another; mix for one minute longer; dredge in two ounces sifted flour, gently mix with a skimmer for one minute. Beat up to a stiff froth the whites of the two eggs, carefully mix again with the skimmer for half minute.
Lightly butter a large dome-shaped mould; place the preparation in the mould, then set in a moderate oven to bake for twenty-five minutes. Remove, let cool off; unmould the cake and cut it into half-inch slices, crosswise. Spread a tablespoon creme Frangipani over each slice; carefully arrange the slices on top of one another, giving the original cake form. Place the cake on a cold dish with a folded napkin; decorate with whipped cream and serve with a claret Sabayon sauce in a separate saucebowl.
This is a French almond sponge, baked in a dome mould, sliced and rebuilt with frangipane between the layers. The problem is the second ingredient in the first line.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted. A brief blanch in boiling water is not a reliable way to remove it, and this recipe blanches for five minutes and then pounds the nuts to a paste. Raw bitter almonds may not be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted elsewhere for this reason.
- "Two beans" is not a measurement"Two beans" is not a weight -- The original names a number but no weight, and the cyanide yield of a bitter almond varies with variety and season. A quantity given by the piece cannot be scaled or judged safe by eye. Use a current recipe for a French almond sponge instead.
- What the bitter almonds were forThey supplied the marzipan-adjacent perfume that we now associate with almond extract. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European kitchens used the nut itself, and cookbooks of this period call for one or two of them casually, as here.
- Crème frangipaneCr frangipane -- Frangipane cream in the classical sense is a thick pastry-cream enriched with pounded almonds or crushed macaroons, rather than the modern almond-cream filling now sold as frangipane. Here it is spread on cooled slices.
- Claret sabayonSabayon is the French form of zabaglione, whisked over hot water, here with red wine rather than the Italian Marsala. The recipe sends it to table in a separate saucebowl, with the cake on a cold dish.
- The dome mouldA dome-shaped mould of the bombe type, lightly buttered as directed. The dome shape is the point: the cake is sliced crosswise and stacked back up so the layers reassemble the original silhouette.
Gâteau lyonnaise belongs to the era when a dessert was judged as much by its reconstruction as by its baking. Filippini's International Cook Book, drawn from his years in the Delmonico's kitchens, is full of these restaurant assemblies: a plain almond sponge is baked, cooled, cut, spread, rebuilt, set on a folded napkin and sent out with a sauce in a separate boat. The bitter almonds are the period detail. Before commercial almond extract became cheap and universal, cooks reached for a handful of the bitter nut to sharpen the flavour of the sweet.