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Presidential Patience
Place a half pound sifted flour in a large bowl, break in a fresh egg, the whites of four, six drops vanilla essence, an ounce grated sweet chocolate, and sharply beat up with spatula for four minutes. Slide a half-inch tube into pastry bag and drop in preparation. Lightly butter and flour a pastry tin, press paste into tin in chesnut-like forms, keeping them apart, and place on one side in a dry, warm place for an hour, Set in a brisk oven for about eight minutes, or until an exceedingly good golden colour, remove, let stand on table for a few minutes, detach from pan with a knife blade, place on a compotier and serve.
A stiff piped biscuit in the Delmonico-era petit four tradition, closer to a chocolate meringue-macaroon paste than to a batter. The wording is terse and one ingredient appears to be missing, so read the notes before starting.
- The missing sugarAs written the paste contains flour, egg, whites, vanilla and an ounce of chocolate, and nothing sweet beyond the sweet chocolate itself. A dropped line is one possible explanation, though we cannot know; comparable piped biscuits generally carry some powdered sugar, on the order of 4 to 6 oz for half a pound of flour. Without it these will bake up bland and hard.
- Weights and dropsHalf a pound of sifted flour is about 2 cups (225 g). An ounce of grated chocolate is a scant ¼ cup. Six drops of vanilla essence is only about 1/16 teaspoon; period essences varied a great deal in strength, so a scant half teaspoon of modern extract is a reasonable substitute.
- Sweet chocolateHere "sweet chocolate" means a sweetened eating chocolate, not baking chocolate and not cocoa powder. A semi-sweet bar is the nearest modern equivalent. Grate it fine so it does not clog the tube.
- Consistency and the tubeA half-inch plain tube and four minutes of sharp beating tell you the paste should be thick but pipeable, holding a peak. If it will not extrude, loosen it with another white rather than water; if it slumps, it will spread instead of standing in the chestnut shapes called for.
- The hour of standingResting the piped shapes an hour in a dry, warm place lets the surface dry to a skin, which should help them hold their shape and keep a smooth surface in the oven.
- Brisk ovenA brisk oven is roughly 400-425°F (200-220°C). Eight minutes at that heat suits small piped biscuits; start watching at six, since the colour can go past golden quickly.
- Releasing themLetting the tin stand a few minutes before running a knife blade under each one matters — hot they tear, fully cold they cement to the pan. Butter and flour the tin properly, or use parchment.
- Yield and serviceExpect 24 to 30 pieces the size of a chestnut. A compotier is a footed dish; these were served at the end of dinner alongside other small dry pastries, and they keep a few days in a tin.
The name belongs to a genre rather than to a dish: late nineteenth-century hotel and restaurant cookery attached ornamental titles to small pastries and garnishes, and general cookbooks often picked such titles up, which is why a page can end up with a piece of pure kitchen fancy. Nothing in the method is presidential — it is a piped chocolate biscuit of the type a pastry department turned out by the hundred for the friandises tray. What the recipe does show clearly is the professional habit of drying piped work before baking, the same trick that gives a macaron its foot, and the professional vocabulary that assumed a reader knew what a spatula, a pastry bag and a compotier were without being told.