oil, put two third lb. lady fingers or macaroons
crumbed and let it boil for five minutes, adding a small piece of
butter. Rub everything through a sieve and put back on the fire with the
nuts to dissolve the sugar. Let it cool and add six eggs, first the
yolks, then the white beaten, pour in a mold greased with butter and
sprinkled with bread crumbs ground fine. The mold must not be all full.
Bake in the oven and serve cold.

This dose will be sufficient for eight or ten persons.

183

CRISP BISCUITS

(Biscotti croccanti)

One pound of flour.
Half a pound granulated sugar.
1/4 lb. sweet almonds, whole and shelled, mixed to a few pine-seeds.
A piece of butter, one and a half ounce.
A pinch of anise-seeds.
Five eggs.
A pinch of salt.

Leave back the almonds and pine-seeds to add them afterward, and mix
everything with four eggs, so as to use the fifth if it is necessary to
make a soft dough. Divide into four cakes half an inch thick and as
large as a hand, place them in a receptacle greased with butter and
sprinkled with flour. Glaze the cakes with yolk of eggs. Bake in the
oven, but only as much as will still permit cutting the cakes into
slices, which you will do the day after, as the crust will then be
softened. Put the slices back in the oven, so that they will be toasted
on both sides and you will have the crisp biscuits.

184

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 1-1/2 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. Gr