Golden flaky almond puffs dusted with icing sugar on a vintage serving plate

Restoration England · England

Woolley's Almond Puffs

Name: Woolley's Almond Puffs
Total time: 43 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: England
Ingredients: 250 g puff pastry; 150 g ground almonds; 100 g caster sugar; 2 tablespoons rosewater; 1 egg white; 1 egg, beaten for glazing; Icing sugar for dusting

From The Queen-like Closet · Hannah Woolley · 1670

Verified from original source

Light pastry puffs filled with sweetened almond paste and rosewater.

Historical note: Beat your almonds with rosewater and sugar...

History

Woolley's Almond Puffs appear in Hannah Woolley's 'The Queen-like Closet' (1670), part of England's Stuart-era confectionery tradition. Woolley, a gentlewoman and cookery teacher, wrote practical manuals for middling households aspiring to courtly refinement. Her almond puffs likely combined ground almonds, sugar, egg whites, and rosewater, baked into light, meringue-like confections. Such 'puffs' descended from medieval marchpane traditions and reflected England's growing sugar trade. Almonds remained expensive luxuries, marking these as special occasion sweets. Similar almond-based biscuits persist in modern British baking, though Woolley's versions would have been less standardised than today's recipes.

Sources

Hannah Woolley, The Queen-like Closet, 1670
Elizabeth David, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, 1977
Jennifer Stead, 'Hannah Woolley's The Queen-like Closet' in Banquetting Stuffe, ed. C. Anne Wilson, 1991
C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, 1973
Ivan Day, Royal Sugar Sculpture (historic confectionery specialist)

Serves

Prep

25m

Cook

18m

Difficulty

Medium