Nougat de Montélimar recipe

Nougat de Montélimar in detail

French confiserie and, in particular, nougat de Montélimar (a.k.a., torrone in Italian) has become a minor obsession and happy diversion of mine of late. Making it requires precision and concentration, and at every step of the process the substances involved are quite beautiful. The end result is, moreover, one of the most intoxicatingly delicious concoctions known to human chematosensation. Its production is a blissful alchemical experience.

Well-made nougat is essentially a honey-impregnated meringue.

I began with Flora Lazar's recipe, adapted from the French Pastry School, and demonstrated in this slightly quirky video. I have modified the recipe in several ways: to be a bit softer, to include vanilla flavor, to show off the wafer paper better, etc. I have also endeavored simply to clarify ambiguities in the original recipe, and to provide my own experiences working with this procedure. I have experimented with over 20 batches of nougat to arrive at the information contained here.

Ingredients

145g water
440g Sugar, plus 20g for egg whites
90g Liquid glucose or Corn syrup
345g Honey Heat in microwave for ~20 seconds to make pouring and measuring easier.
70g Egg whites
70g cocoa butter, melted in microwave sources: LA Burdick, L'Épicerie
4 tablespoons Nelsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon pure vanilla powder Using this adds a strong vanilla flavor without souping up the mixture with extra liquid, as vanilla extract would.
405g raw skinless almonds Swap out 130g of this for pistachios if you like.
100g candied orange peel or other drief fruit: cranberries, cherries, candied ginger, etc.
2 sheets of edible wafer paper
Corn starch powder as anti-stick coating for hands and tools

Preparing your workspace

You should measure out all ingredients in advance using the mise en place method. I like to use the bowls designed by Duralex expressly for that purpose.

For efficient mise en place prep, you'll also need a well-calibrated scale with a tare function. I highly recommend the very affordable Ozeri Touch Professional.

Array the mix-in ingredients (cocoa butter, vanilla, nuts, fruit) next to the mixer, to be added quickly at the right moment.

To the side of that, lay out a quarter-size baking sheet or jelly roll pan powdered with corn starch around the edges and with a single sheet of wafer paper in the bottom.

Place nearby a bowl of corn starch and bowl scrapers coated in the corn starch. Here I am using a duo of awesome scrapers from Ateco and iSi.

You'll also want to have the flat beater attachment (preferably a coated version) for your mixer nearby.

Directions

Heat oven to 350° F. Spread the nuts in a single layer on a quarter-size baking sheet or jelly roll pan. Roast. This will take about 12-18 minutes. You don't want any burning or charring, but there will be a rapid and radical change in their aroma and flavor when they go from being raw to ready; I'm always impressed by what a definitive tipping point there is between these two states. The only way to know for sure that they are done is to cool one off and taste it. There should be no hint of rawness at all and only a gentle toasted flavor. The importance of this step can't be overstated; since nougat is so subtly flavored, the taste of the almonds is central to the confection.

(I've always used almonds with the skins on, but I recently noticed that Lazar uses blanched/skinned almonds. This might make for a more visually and gustatorily pure end product; mine is more rustic.)

Set the nuts aside to cool while making the nougat.
In an exceedingly large pot, combine water, the larger amount of sugar, glucose/corn syrup, and honey.

N.B.: The size of the pot is very important: during the initial phase of bubbling, the volume of the liquid will as much as triple or quadruple as natural impurities in the honey volatilize, and you don't want to get this rapid-hardening molten substance all over you or your stove if it froths over the edge of your pot. To that end, I use a cast-iron large Creuset dutch oven—as a slight caveat, incidentally, this recipe may therefore be slightly tuned to the thermal properties of this vessel, but you should really just buy one anyway if you don't have one; they're sublimely versatile, beautiful, and a canonical component of any French kitchen.

Install a candy thermometer, touching the bottom of the pot. (No joke. If for some fussy pedantic reason this bothers you, you can always experiment with leaving it up in the liquid and removing the mixture from the heat later in the cooking process than specified in this recipe—closer to 300° F—but for me doing so gave varying temperatures between batches and inconsistent results. So I've modified this recipe to remove the candy from the heat slightly earlier and just keep the thermometer in direct contact with the pot.)

Fit the pot with a silicone pour spout.
Heat mixture on medium-high heat. It will go through a number of phases. First, homogenization.

Then the cloudy, frothy, high-volume phase as the impurities volatilize.

Then the clear bubbly phase.

As we approach our target temperature, the substance will take on an amber cast and darken slightly.

I like to stir the mixture throughout these phases with my silicone spatula. I have no idea if this does anything, but it's fun.
As the sugar mixture is heating, fit your mixer (preferably a KitchenAid Professional 600 or large industrial mixer) with a wire whisk attachment (for KitchenAids, I highly recommend the 11-Wire Whip, which whips meringues much faster than the whisk that comes standard on these machines—note that the timings on this recipe are calibrated for using this whisk).

Add the egg whites and smaller amount of sugar to the mixing bowl.

As the temperature on the sugar mixture hits around 265° F (and while it continues to cook), engage the mixer on high and whip eggs until they form soft peaks. The idea is to try to make this happen right around when the sugar mixture comes to temperature at 290° F.
At the precise moment when the thermometer on the cooking sugar mixture registers 290° F, remove it from the heat and pour slowly into the egg whites with the whisk attachment running at medium speed.

N.B. If you exceed this temperature by even a bit, your attempt is a failure and you might as well dump out the sugar mixture and try again. Heating to too high a temperature leads to nougat that looks fine at first but then after an hour or so hardens into an inedible brick, a sadistic sort of peanut brittle perversion.

Continue to beat on medium speed for three minutes after the sugar mixture has been added fully. After those three minutes, the mixture should look gooey and nougat-like.
Time to add the magical cocoa butter.

This is truly the secret to this recipe. Unlike most nougat recipes, which are extremely sticky and hard to work with, the cocoa butter makes the nougat very pliant and easy to work with, minimizing sticking both to hands and tools. It also happens to add a nice lustrous and resinous sheen.

N.B.: because we're using wafer paper, I have greatly reduced the amount of cocoa butter used in this recipe. Using a lot of cocoa butter tends to make the lovely wafer paper lipid-mottled, which isn't very visually appealing. If you should wish to forego the wafer paper, you might wish to use 115g of cocoa butter, as per Lazar's original recipe.

Slowly add the cocoa butter. As the cocoa butter incorporates, the nougat will become very lustrous and break into many small discrete strands. This looks bizarre and a little unsettling, but this is precisely what you're looking for. A few seconds after each addition of cocoa butter, the material will coalesce again in a mystical and otherworldly manner.

Music: Skating by Vince Guaraldi (MP3)
Add the vanilla powder and allow to incorporate/dissolve.
Remove whisk and add beater attachment. You should, if you're careful of the temperature of the nougat, be able to remove the excess candy from the whisk with your fingers (coated in corn starch) and/or a silicone spatula.
Add nuts and fruit (if any) and pulse the beater attachment through the mixture a few times just to incorporate, something like for a single 360° rotation in a few tiny steps.
Moving quickly, scrape the nougat out onto the prepared wafer paper in the baking sheet.

Flatten into a sheet.

Add second sheet of wafer paper to top and square off edges as best as possible.

Allow to cool and set up for at least an hour or two.
Cut with a knife or pizza roller into strips.

You can make short strips to array on a plate for a party.

Or make long strips to wrap in cellophane (to avoid sticking) to give as gifts. I like tying these bags off with baker's twine.

I have also served the long form plated as an accompaniment to coffee for guests.
Toss everything in the dishwasher without fear. The nougat encrustations on your utensils and pots may look daunting, but the warm water in the dishwasher will dissolve it all completely.