That question from reader Phil H., and it’s good one. The thing is, in most of the English-speaking world, the term “petit four” refers to a very specific thing. That being a small, layered cake covered with poured fondant. Among the French, however, the term refers to an entire family of small sweets. The word […]
READ ONRegular reader and commenter Chana writes in with this: You see — you take a simple potato knish, change the dough a litte, fill it with something a little different, and everyone is screaming “you call that a knish? You call THAT a KNISH?? Are you crazy? That is NOT a KNISH!!” You take a […]
READ ONSo. Two disks of almond meringue stuck together with a filling. Not terribly much to work with from a creative standpoint. Or at least that’s the conclusion Parisian pastry chefs seem to have collectively arrived at in the decades after Desfontaines’ innovation. For more than fifty years macarons remained pretty straightforward affairs. The meringue disks […]
READ ONHere are the kind of posts I’d be putting up if I were four inches tall, made of clay and living in a cardboard box. The techniques are amazingly similar. Terrific stuff. Thanks to reader Lisa H.!
READ ONWhat do macarons and macaroni have in common? Not much, other than the fact that they’re both made from pulverized ingredients (almonds and wheat, respectively). Though etymologists debate the subject, it’s thought by many that the Italian word maccheroni comes from an earlier Italian word, maccare that means “to reduce” or “make smaller.” The present […]
READ ONMacarons are such simple preparations, their origins are fairly easy to triangulate. Their principal ingredient is sugar, which means they date no further back than the Colonial period, the time when cane sugar was flowing in earnest from the West Indies. That supposition is bolstered by the fact that they are meringues, which means they […]
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