A single simple recipe this week – for seventeenth-century macarons, sometimes confused with macaroni, not yet distinguished from macaroons. I said last week that this recipe would come from the same word as the previous entry’s English version of the Italian pasta maccherone. Maccherone or maccaroni comes from an Italian dialect, where it in turn might come from the rare Latin verb maccare – “to beat, crush or dent.” However, a more complex but possibly more likely word journey sees it come from Greek, where makaria meant “food made with barley” and earlier “blessed” – from the goddess Macaria and the fact that the food was used at funerals. (That is probably also the root of Macarena – the Spanish feminine name which was used for a certain dance.)
From Italy in the sixteenth century, the paste (pasta) – maccaroni – and the corresponding word probably travelled to France when Catherine de' Medici married French King Henri II in 1533. Some twenty years later, French monk, doctor, scholar, and writer François Rabelais seemingly introduces it to his language as macaron. Cakes or biscuits made with almonds were not new, they probably came from Persia, but the word and the food seem to have first come together there sometime in France during the mid sixteenth century.
My version of a macaron is based on a recipe from the same general area from a little over one hundred years later. Macarons or macaroons (sometimes macaroni,) were known by these various terms in England in at least the early seventeenth century, but the first real recipe seemingly comes from a familiar and foreign source. The Perfect Cook was published in English in 1656; it is a translation of Le Pâtissier françois (1653) penned by the pioneering cookery writer François Pierre La Varenne. There are similar instructions “To make Macroones” from Joseph Cooper, “chief cook to the late king” published between these dates in The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented (1654).
However, I have chosen to adapt La Varenne’s recipe and its translation, trying to follow his fairly detailed instructions. I present those, after which I give some culinary notes and a little more history.
Recipe
“The manner how to make Macaroons” – “La Maniere de faire du macaron”
Ingredients
- 115g (about ¼ lbs) almond flour (See Notes).
- 115g (about ¼ lbs) powdered sugar (See Notes.)
- 1 egg white
- 15ml (about 1 tbsp) rosewater
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 120°C (about 250°F).
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Whisk together almond flour and sugar in a large bowl.
Stir in egg whites and rosewater and mixed with a wooden spoon until you have a well-combined paste.
With your hands, grab a bit of this paste the size of a golf ball and roll it between your hands.
Roll it so it is twice as long as it is wide, then press it between your hands to flatten it a little.
Place the pieces of paste a good distance apart on your parchment-covered baking sheet.
In the middle of the oven, bake for 45 minutes.
Turn the oven off and let your macarons sit there until a dry hard crust has completely formed. I let mine stand for 3 hours.
If at any point your macarons begin to take colour when baking, turn off your oven and begin the drying process.
Serve.
Notes
My recipe calls for powdered sugar. Since modern icing sugar has cornstarch added, I took the step of processing caster or berry sugar in a spice grinder for a few seconds.
I reduced the quantities the period recipe lists by four times. The French and English recipes call for a livre (pound) of almonds and 4 egg whites. I used my judgement on the amount of rosewater; I probably used a bit more because my mix was dry. It was not overpowering in the final macaron though.
The shape I decided on comes from Le Pâtissier instructions and from descriptions of later macaroons in English cookery. La Varenne says to make the pieces “un peau longs en forme de macaron” – a little long in the form of a macaron; the last bit not being that helpful. Later books like England's Newest Way in All Sorts of Cookery (1708) say to make them “longish” and The Accomplish'd Housewife; or, The Gentlewoman's Companion (1745) says to “cut them into oval Forms.”
La Varenne does not write it, but The Perfect Cook’s translator adds a final clause that says: “all the beauty of your said Macaroons” is “whiteness.” The French author does say that “bons Pastissiers” – good pastry cooks – will take the macarons out of the oven before they are “parfaitement” – perfectly – dried, so they “ne devienne roux” - will not colour (literally - become red). They instead leave them on top of the warm oven for twenty-four hours to finish drying. Since modern ovens have more control and I have the luxury of not using my oven all the time, the baking time, temperature, and leaving them in the oven to dry was my version of this process.
The resulting macaron is a biscuit or cookie that is very crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. The rosewater is a nice point of difference but for me they are a little sweet and the interior too soft. Very much edible, though, and simple to make.
Historical Notes
The recipe not being complex, this entry was in large part an exercise in seeing where the words macaron, macaroon and the linked macaroni went in the seventeenth century, moving into the eighteenth.
I explored the early English thoughts on macaroni last week and there are some similar feelings about macaroons/macarons. In a sermon preached at Oxford in 1630, Richard James – a Bachelor of Divinity- decries what other nations allow to be eaten at Lent. He says “they eate all sorts of the most lushious fish…Pottage of Aemons, of Macarons, of Mushrooms…” Whether he means macaroons or macaroni, the sermon shows the early perception of the food as something rich and foreign, as well as, demonstrating the possible confusion of the two. In a similar theme of foreign foods being bad but for a slightly different reason, the word shows up in an English translation of a Latin medical text - Flatibus Humanum Corpus Molestantibus. The English A New and Needful Treatise of Spirits and Wind Offending Mans Body (1668) says: “the Italian Dishes are very hurtful, Turtellae [tortellini], Lasaniae [lasagne], Macaroons, Worms…These fill the body with gross humours.” The translation on the last couple dishes is a little off: the original Latin says “Maccaroni, Vermiculli.” The second is understandable, vermicelli means “little worms” and the Latin for worm is vermis. The first shows again that the meanings of macaron and macaroni were not clearly separated. Similar interchanging definitions appear well into the eighteenth century. For instance, in a book from 1769 The Art of Cookery and Pastery Made Easy and Familiar there is a recipe for “Macarooney.” It says to take “macaroons,” cook them in milk and water and served them with breadcrumbs, butter, salt, nutmeg, and old Cheshire cheese. It is obviously macaroni cheese made with “macaroons.”
There are several other sources that explicitly say that macaroon is just the translation of the French macaron and still today in the UK, a macaroon can be what is usually a French (technically Parisian) macaron. A modern macaron has similar ingredients to La Varenne’s recipe; however, the egg whites are whisked and ingredients like cream of tartar are added to stiffen them further. These are added to the almond flour and sugar, often with colour and flavourings. The mix is usually piped into disks, baked, and then two are formed into a kind of sandwich with a buttercream filling. Here is a modern UK recipe for these, still called macaroons: recipes.sainsburys.co.uk/recipes/macaroons.
There is more to recount about the confusion of macaron, macaroon, and macaroni but it will probably just get even more confusing. That confusion won’t a be part of next week’s entry, but I am not sure what will be at this point, unfortunately.
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