Macaroons
Macaroons are long-life baked goods whose basic component is a mass of sugar , egg white and crushed almonds , nuts or other oil seeds . Instead of the crushed almonds or oil seeds, marzipan or other raw materials are also used. In addition to almonds, the oil seeds used include hazelnuts , desiccated coconut , pistachios or peach kernels , but never peanuts .
Macaroons are baked goods with a comparatively long history. They emerged from the further development of recipes that had their origins in the Middle East and also influenced European cuisine during the Arab expansion from the 9th century. In contrast to the classic (unfilled) French macaron, the “trend pastry”, the filled macaron (French: Macaron Parisien), is not one of the long-life baked goods and is a further development in Paris in the 19th century.
Definition of terms
According to the “Guidelines for Fine Baked Goods” of the German Food Book , the word “macaroons” only denotes almond and marzipan macaroons without any additional additions, other macaroons are named after the type of oil seeds or raw mixture, for example hazelnut macaroons or coconut macaroons . Flour and starch are not added, with the exception of coconut macaroons, which may contain a maximum of 3% of the total mass of cereal products or starches.
etymology
The German word macrone comes from the French macaron . The French word is not exactly synonymous with the German one, but rather describes a special kind of almond macaroons, see Macaron .
The term appears for the first time in the Greek μακαρία ( makaria ), which describes a flour porridge that was traditionally eaten at funerals. and later in the Makarona or Melomakarona as Christmas biscuits, whereas Makaronia refers to pasta, especially noodles.
The Italian language knows the term at the latest around 1279 the word maccarruni appears in Sicilian , in an area where Greek was also spoken. Maccheroni are now used to describe different types of durum wheat pasta. A relationship with the root word maccare (pound) is also possible.
history
Macaroons go back to sweets in Arabic cuisine, in which finely grated almonds are mixed with sugar and rose water. Nut-based sweets such as fālūdhaj and lausinaj - baked goods with sweet almond cream inside - were widespread there. This sweet pastry, in turn, was borrowed from the Sassanid Shahs in Persia, where a similar almond confection was served to celebrate the Zoroastrian New Year ( Nouruz ). As a result of the Arab expansion , these recipes reached Sicily and the Arab-ruled part of Spain from the 9th century and influenced European cuisine. The oldest mentions of maccarruni in the Sicilian dialect or maccherone in high-level Italian refer to a sweet pasta dish. Boccaccio mentions Decamerone Maccherone in his collection of novels around 1350 as a kind of gnocchi that was eaten with butter and cheese. However, this recipe was also subject to change. In a 15th century cookbook, Sicilian maccherons were made with white flour, egg white, and rose water and eaten with sugar, butter, and grated cheese. In Rabelais ' novel series Gargantua and Pantagruel , macaron is mentioned as a dessert in a list of fantastic desserts . A little later, macaroon also appears in the English language. The spelling with the ending -oon indicates that the word was borrowed from French .
The first known recipe comes from the handwritten cookbook that Martha Washington's family brought to North America and was probably written down at the beginning of the 17th century. This recipe uses almonds, rose water, sugar, egg white and musk. The mass was placed on baking wafers , baked briefly and then dried again in the lukewarm oven. Dan Jarufsky points out that the use of rose water and musk still shows the proximity to the original Arabic recipe. The first recipe that corresponds to the modern recipe and does not use rose water and musk can be found in the recipe collection of the French chef François-Pierre de La Varenne . from 1652. In France, regionally specific variants of this recipe developed as early as the 17th century, which were often produced and sold in nunneries. In the Italian language maccherone only referred to pasta at that time, the similarly produced biscuits were now referred to as amaretti (Lombardy) or Marzapanetti (region around Siena).
The increased import of coconuts through Europe and the United States in the 19th century led to the fact that finely ground almonds were initially replaced by coconuts , especially in the United States. The first recipes for this appeared in the United States around 1830, and in the second half of the 19th century, recipes for coconut macaroons were primarily found in Jewish cookbooks. Since then, coconut macaroons have often been prepared for seder evenings in Jewish kitchens in the USA . Around 1890, coconut macaroons were also increasingly found in American cookbooks that were not assigned to a specific ethnic group. This was preceded by an increased import of coconuts after the American Civil War , especially from the Caribbean.
Parallel to the development of the coconut macaroon , the macarons developed in France , which were initially called le macaron parisien or, after the first confectioner who made such a pastry, le macaron Gerbet . However, the macarons are no longer a long-life biscuit: It is a double biscuit made from almond meringue, which is filled with creams, canache and the like and therefore has a shorter shelf life. In the Jewish kitchen of the United States, the French macarons are increasingly replacing the more traditional coconut macaroon on seder evening.
Macaroons are traditional Christmas cookies in Germany . The production has been documented since at least the 16th century, although the origin in Italy is considered likely. The term macaron has existed in the French language since that time. In 1604, a cookbook published in Liège also mentions macaroons. The pastry has been known in Germany since the 17th century.
Manufacturing
Macaroons are a diverse family of pastries, which is why - and also because of the sometimes very different raw materials - there are a wide variety of recipes. What they all have in common is the production of a passable base mass from the crushed oil seeds, sugar and egg white, the macaroon mass (for the preparation of the mass see there). This basic mass is typically sprayed through a perforated or star nozzle onto the baking sheet or onto a baked surface such as wafers or shortcrust pastry bases and baked at low temperatures between 160 and 180 ° C. A dry oven atmosphere gives the macaroons their typical cracked surface.
After baking and cooling, macaroons are often coated with couverture or dipped in with the ends. The German food book for almond, hazelnut and walnut macaroons, but not for persipan and coconut macaroons, prohibits cocoa- containing fat icing or other coatings that can be confused with types of chocolate. It is especially common for persipan macaroons, which are already considered an inferior substitute for marzipan products on the market.
Macaroons don't spoil quickly because of their high sugar and fat content, but they can dry out. Juicy macaroons should therefore be packaged in a steam-tight manner.
Examples of macaroon pastries
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- Egg yolk macaroons or Swiss confectionery consist of marzipan paste , sugar and egg yolk, which replaces the egg white. Egg yolk macaroons are usually placed on the bottom with couverture .
- Coconut macaroons .
- Makronenzwieback is a biscuit , which is finished with a circulation Makronenmasse.
- Amarettini are an Italian variant that ispreparedwith almond or apricot kernels and amaretto .
- Macaroon cake or Milanese cake .
literature
- Dan Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. WW Norton & Company, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-393-24587-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c German Food Book, Guidelines for Fine Baked Goods , Section III 9.
- ^ A b Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 132.
- ↑ Dorothea Stöhlker: Macarons: the trend pastry from France . daskochrezept.de / Burda , accessed on March 6, 2016.
- ^ A b c d Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 141.
- ^ Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 134.
- ↑ Hachette. Dictionnaire pratique du français. Complete rework. Langenscheidt, Berlin, Munich etc. 2000, ISBN 3-468-49010-0 .
- ^ Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 131.
- ^ A b c Dan Jurafsky: Macarons, Macaroons, Macaroni. The curious history. In: Slate of November 16, 2011.
- ^ A b c d Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 136.
- ^ Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 137.
- ^ A b Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 138.
- ↑ Dena Kleiman: The 5th Question At the Seder: Have a Macaroon? In: The New York Times, March 20, 1991.
- ↑ Irene Krauss , Chronicle of beautiful Backwerke , Matthaes, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-87516-292-7 , p. 260 f.
- ↑ a b Udo Hanneforth: Production of fine baked goods. In: Wilfried Seibel (Ed.): Fine baked goods. 2nd Edition. Behr, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-86022-852-8 , p. 163.