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Soft Biscuits
(Biscotti teneri) For these biscuits it would be necessary to have a tin box about four inches wide and a little less long than the oven used. In this way the biscuits will have a corner on both sides and, if cut a little more than half an inch, they will be of the right proportion. The ingredients needed are:
Flour, about two ounces.
Potato meal, a little less.
Sugar, four ounces (1/4 lb.) Sweet almonds 1½ ounce.
Candied orange or angelica, one ounce.
Fruit preserve, one ounce.
Three eggs.
Skin the almonds, cut them in half lengthwise and dry in the sun or at the fire. Pastry cooks usually leave them with the skin but it is much preferable to skin them. Cut in little cubes the candied fruits and the preserve.
Stir for a long while, about half an hour the sugar in the egg-yolks and a little flour then add the white of the eggs well beaten and when every thing is well beaten add the flour, letting it fall from a sieve. Mix slowly and scatter on the mixing the almonds and the cubes of candied and preserved fruit. Grease and sprinkle the tin box with flour. Bake in the oven and cut the biscuits the day after. If desired these can also be roasted on both sides. 185
This is a sponge-batter biscotto, baked as a narrow slab, rested overnight and then sliced — closer to a savoiardi loaf than to the hard almond biscotti most people know. The proportions are odd by modern eyes: there is twice as much sugar as flour, and the eggs do all the lifting.
- The hinge: beat the yolks and sugar to a ribbonThe half hour of stirring is not a flourish — there is no leavening here beyond air. Five to eight minutes in a stand mixer will get the yolk-and-sugar mixture pale, thick and falling in a ribbon, which is the same end point.
- Potato mealThis is potato starch (fecola di patate), the fine white powder, not the heavier modern potato flour made from cooked potato. Cornstarch is the closest substitute if you cannot find it.
- Weights, translatedAbout 2 oz flour is roughly 1/2 cup; 4 oz sugar is about 1/2 cup plus a spoonful; 1 1/2 oz almonds is a scant 1/3 cup. The book's ounces are weights, so a scale is worth using given how small the flour quantity is.
- The tinFour inches wide, as specified, and a little shorter than the oven; the book gives no depth. In practice a narrow loaf pan or a small quarter-sheet pan with the batter confined to a four-inch strip. Grease and flour it as directed; this batter sticks. The width is what gives the finished slices their proportion.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Treat it as a moderate oven, 340-350F, for roughly 25-35 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean. Too hot and the sugary crust colours before the centre sets.
- "Fruit preserve" cut in cubesNot a spoonable jam — this means a stiff paste firm enough to dice, such as quince paste (cotognata) or a very reduced fruit conserve. A loose jam will streak and weep into the batter.
- Resting and slicingThe overnight wait is structural: the warm slab crumbles, while a day-old one slices cleanly at the specified half inch or a little more. Use a long serrated knife.
- "Roasted on both sides"That is the optional second bake that turns these into keeping biscuits — the cut slices laid flat in a low oven, about 300F, until dry and lightly gold, turning once.
- YieldThe book fixes the width at four inches but leaves the length to whatever oven you use, so the slice count depends on your tin; cut a little more than half an inch thick as directed.
The Italian Cook Book (1919), compiled by Maria Gentile, draws heavily on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, and this entry has Artusi's manner all over it: the fussy specification of the tin, the aside that pastry cooks leave the almond skins on but one really ought not. Biscotto means twice-cooked, and the closing line about roasting the slices on both sides is the survival of that literal sense — a second baking dried the slices for keeping. The teneri of the title marks the softer alternative: bake once, slice, and eat them as a cake-like sweet with wine or coffee. The candied orange, angelica and firm fruit paste belong to an older Italian confectionery tradition, and potato starch is a common lightener in Italian sponge batters of the period.