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Crisp Cake in Double Boiler
(Croccante a bagno maria) Sugar, five and a half ounces.
Sweet almonds, three ounces.
Egg-yolks, five.
Milk, one pint.
Skin the almonds and chop them in little pieces about as big as a grain of wheat. Put on the fire two thirds of the sugar and when it is all melted pour the almonds and stir continually with the ladle until they have taken the color of cinnamon. Then put them in a tin greased with butter and when they are cold, pound them very fine with the remaining third of sugar.
Add the yolks and then the milk, mix well and pour the mixture in a mold with a hole in the middle and greased evenly with butter. Place the mold in a double boiler so that it will be cooked by steam. 206
A praline custard steamed in a ring mold — essentially a crème caramel whose sweetness comes from almond brittle ground to a powder rather than from liquid caramel. The whole success of it sits in the temperature of the water bath.
- Metric and cup equivalentsFive and a half ounces of sugar is about 155 g, roughly ¾ cup; three ounces of almonds is about 85 g, a generous ½ cup. One pint of milk is 2 cups (475 ml) by American measure, though the Italian source behind this book would have meant roughly half a litre — either reading works.
- "Double boiler" here means a water bathA bagno maria is the mold standing in a pan of hot water, not a nested-saucepan double boiler. Set the buttered ring mold in a deep pan, pour in hot water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and hold the water at a bare tremble — never a rolling boil, which curdles the custard into something grainy and weeping.
- The hinge: donenessThe custard is set when the center reaches about 170–175°F and a knife inserted an inch from the tube comes out clean, with the very middle still faintly wobbly. Expect 45 to 60 minutes. Carryover heat finishes it, so pull it early rather than late.
- Making the croccanteMelting two thirds of the sugar alone is a dry caramel: use a heavy pan, low heat, and do not stir until it has liquefied at the edges. Stirring the almonds through until they are cinnamon-colored toasts them; poured onto a buttered sheet it hardens into brittle.
- Pounding the brittleCold brittle broken up and pulsed in a food processor with the reserved sugar gives the fine praline powder the recipe wants in seconds. Stop before it turns oily and pasty — you want a sandy powder that will dissolve in the milk.
- Almonds"Sweet almonds" is the period distinction from bitter almonds, which were sold for flavoring and are not a supermarket item today. Ordinary blanched almonds are what is meant; skin them by dropping into boiling water for a minute and slipping the skins off.
- The moldA mold with a hole in the middle is a ring or savarin mold; the central tube helps heat reach the custard from both sides, which encourages even cooking, though the recipe gives no reason for the shape. A tube pan or six buttered ramekins will do; ramekins cook in about 25 minutes.
- Yield and servingA pint of milk with five yolks will serve about six. Cool completely, then chill several hours before running a thin knife around the edge and inverting onto a plate; warm custard will slump. Sauceless as written, it takes well to a spoonful of crushed brittle scattered over, if you set some aside.
Croccante is the Italian almond brittle sold at fairs and made at home for festive occasions, and grinding it into a powder to flavor creams, ices and custards is a long-standing Italian practice — the same idea the French call praline. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was compiled for American readers and draws on the domestic Italian tradition; a number of its recipes run close to those in Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, and the numbers at the end of entries appear to function as cross-references, though the book does not say so. The term bagno maria — bain-marie, Mary's bath — is generally traced to Maria the Jewess, an alchemist of late antiquity credited with the gentle water-bath apparatus; by the nineteenth century it simply meant the pan of hot water in which delicate custards and sauces were kept from scorching.