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Nougats De Montelimart
Place two pounds honey in a small saucepan and thoroughly heat without boiling. Have two pounds granulated sugar in a copper basin add a gill cold water, cook on range until it has attained the third degree and then add honey. Beat up whites of three eggs in copper basin to a stiff froth, add preparation to eggs, set basin on the fire and continually whisk until sugar attains the fourth degree. Meanwhile cook three pounds granulated sugar in a separate copper basin until it attains the fourth degree, add to eggs, etc., in basin with a half teaspoon vanilla essence, three pounds shelled whole almonds, a quarter pound shelled whole pistachios, thoroughly mix and remove from fire. Line bottom of a square pastry tin with white wafers, drop in preparation, cover with another layer of wafers, let thoroughly cool off, Cut into one-third-inch slices, then nougats are ready for use.
This is full-scale confectioner's nougat — roughly eleven pounds of it — written for someone with a marble slab and a stand of copper. The whole thing turns on sugar temperatures, and the degree scale used here is the part that needs translating.
- "Third" and "fourth degree"Old sugar-boiling scales are not consistent between books, and this one gives no key, so the numbers are genuinely ambiguous. Judge by the finished product instead: the honey-and-syrup stage wants firm to hard ball, about 250-260F, and the second, separate batch of sugar goes to hard crack, about 300F, which is what sets a sliceable nougat rather than a chewy one.
- Use a thermometerA digital probe or a candy thermometer removes all the guesswork the degree scale creates. Cold-water testing works too, but with this quantity of sugar the margin between a nougat that slices and one that slumps is narrow.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. In a British book of the same era it may mean 5 fl oz; either is fine here, as the water only dissolves the sugar and boils off.
- Copper basinsUnlined copper conducts evenly and is traditional for both sugar work and whipping whites, but stainless or heavy anodised pans do the job. Whatever you use must be tall — boiling sugar climbs and can foam well up the pan.
- White wafersEdible wafer paper, sold as rice paper or by its French name pain azyme, made from potato or wheat starch. It is not the same as culinary rice paper for spring rolls. Without it the slab will weld itself to the tin and to everything it touches.
- The egg whitesThree whites is a small proportion against five pounds of sugar, which is correct for a dense Montélimar-style nougat rather than an airy one. The syrup must go in as a steady thread with the whisk running, and continue whisking; the hot sugar cooks the whites through as it goes.
- Almonds and pistachiosToast and warm the nuts before they go in. Cold nuts drop the temperature of the mass abruptly and make it seize into something you cannot spread.
- Yield and keepingAround ten pounds — enough for a shop counter. Scale to a quarter if you want a domestic batch. Set overnight under a weighted board, cut with a heavy oiled knife, and store airtight; nougat draws damp from the air and goes sticky quickly if left open.
Montélimar, in the Drôme just north of Provence, has been the name attached to white almond-and-honey nougat since the eighteenth century, and the town's claim rests on two local products: almonds and lavender honey. Almond cultivation in the region is traditionally credited to the agronomist Olivier de Serres, who is generally said to have promoted the trees there around 1600. The word itself comes through Occitan nogat, from Latin nux, a nut. Nougat belongs to the Provençal treize desserts served at Christmas, where the white honey nougat and a darker one appear together, and by the time this book was compiled it had become a standard entry in professional confectionery manuals — hence the industrial quantities and the assumption that the reader owns copper basins and knows the degree scale by heart.