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Napoleons
(Paris.) Beat 6 ounces butter, 2 ounces sugar, 2 ounces sweet chopped almonds; add 1/2 pound flour and stir well. Then add the yolk of 1 egg, roll out very thin, and bake in a tin. When cold, cut in strips, spread with jam or whipped cream, and put two together.
A short, almond-rich dough rather than the puff pastry most people expect under this name. The whole recipe hangs on rolling it thin enough and cutting it at the right moment.
- Cut it warm, not coldBaked this thin, the dough is brittle shortbread, and cutting it cold as directed risks shattering it along its own lines. It is safer to score the sheet into strips as soon as it comes from the oven and finish the cuts once it has firmed for a few minutes.
- Weights into cups6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks, 2 oz sugar is about 1/4 cup, 2 oz almonds about 1/2 cup chopped, and 1/2 lb flour is roughly 1 3/4 cups. The dough is stiff and looks dry before the yolk goes in; that is correct.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, for 15 to 20 minutes, until the sheet is pale gold at the edges. Thin shortbread goes from done to over-browned quickly, so watch the last five minutes.
- "Bake in a tin"A rimmed baking sheet. Roll the dough directly onto parchment to about 1/8 inch and slide it on, sheet and all, rather than trying to lift a thin sheet of short dough.
- Sweet almondsThe specification distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older European recipes used sparingly for flavor. Ordinary blanched almonds, chopped fine or briefly pulsed, are what is wanted here.
- FillingJam holds and travels; whipped cream turns the shortbread soft within an hour or two, so fill cream versions just before serving. A thick apricot or raspberry jam suits the almond better than a loose one.
- YieldCut into strips about 1 by 3 inches, the batch will give a couple of dozen filled pairs or more, depending on how thin the dough is rolled and how much is lost in trimming.
"Napoleon" as a pastry name is often said to derive not from the emperor but from napolitain, the French adjective for Neapolitan, though the derivation is contested; the imperial association came later and stuck. The classic Parisian version is mille-feuille, puff pastry layered with pastry cream, and what appears here under the Paris heading is a domesticated cousin: a short almond dough that any home cook could roll and bake without laminating butter into paste for an afternoon. The result is closer to an almond sandwich biscuit than to anything sold in a Paris patisserie, but it keeps the essential idea of the name: two thin crisp layers with something soft between them.