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Almond Chocolate Drops
Put a metal mortar in a hot oven till it is well heated, throw into it a quarter of a pound of cake chocolate, broken into small pieces; pound it to a paste, then mix with it a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted sugar. Blanch, slice, and dry in a cool oven two ounces of sweet almonds; roll each slice smoothly in a little of the chocolate paste, and put them upon sheets of writing-paper till they are cold. Time to prepare, about one hour. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for half a pound of drops.
ALMOND CREAMS. Blanch and pound five ounces of sweet and one ounce of bitter almonds to a paste; put to this loaf sugar to taste, rubbed with lemon-rind, and pounded. Rub smoothly a dessert-spoonful of corn-flour into a quart of milk, or if it is to be had use a pint and a half of cream; add the yolks of three eggs well beaten. Put the whole, when well mixed, into a saucepan, set it on the fire, and stir constantly until it thickens; but on no account allow it to boil. The whites of the eggs may be whisked, and a little placed on the top of each glass. Time, about ten minutes to boil the cream. Probable cost, with milk, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for a dozen custard-glasses.
Two confections run together on one page: a simple chocolate-coated almond sliver, and an almond custard that calls for bitter almonds. The first is straightforward; the second should not be attempted.
- Bitter almondsThe Almond Creams recipe uses an ounce of bitter almonds alongside five ounces of sweet. Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted; raw bitter almonds are barred from sale as food in the US and tightly restricted elsewhere for this reason. An ounce pounded raw into a custard that is never boiled is not a trace flavouring. Use a current recipe if you want an almond custard.
- The custard is also undercooked by modern standardsRaw egg white on top -- The whisked whites are spooned onto the cooled custard without any cooking step, which is a salmonella risk the recipe does not address.
- Cake chocolateFor the drops, this means plain chocolate sold in blocks for cooking. The equal quarter-pound of sifted sugar beaten in suggests it was little or not at all sweetened, so modern eating chocolate plus the full sugar will give something cloying; start from unsweetened or a very dark chocolate.
- The heated mortarThe hot metal mortar is the whole method: it melts the chocolate as you pound so the sugar can be worked in without seizing. A bowl over barely-warm water does the same job, and the sugar should be as fine as you can sift it or the coating will be gritty.
- Cool oven for the almondsRoughly 200-250F, with the door cracked. The point is to dry the blanched slices, not to toast them; damp almonds will make the chocolate paste split.
- Writing-paperUse baking parchment.
- Yield and costHalf a pound of drops, perhaps 30 to 40 depending on how thickly you coat the slices. The prices in pence and shillings are pre-decimal and long obsolete.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically, which is why a chocolate confection and a custard sit side by side under A for almond with no transition between them. Both belong to the Victorian dessert repertoire in which almonds did the work that vanilla and commercial essences do now: sweet almonds for body and bulk, a small proportion of bitter almonds for the sharp marzipan note, a combination found throughout British and French confectionery of the period and still echoed in almond extract today.