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Almond Milk
Blanch and pound four ounces of sweet and six bitter almonds to a paste, adding a few drops of orange-flower water every now and then, to prevent oiling. Add a quart of cold water, and let it stand two or three hours, then strain and bottle for use. A table-spoonful of brandy may be added if liked When wanted, a little of the almond and orange-flower water must be mixed with the milk, and sweetened, and it will be found to be a very refreshing beverage for feverish patients. Time, four hours. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for a quart of milk.
This is a sickroom drink from the era when almond milk was a pharmacy item as much as a kitchen one, and the problem with it is the bitter almonds.
- Bitter almonds are the issueBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what this method does, by pounding to a paste and then steeping in cold water for hours. The water-soluble products are drawn straight into the liquid that is strained off and drunk.
- The quantity is not trivialSix bitter almonds is a non-trivial quantity of cyanide precursor, and there is no cooking step to drive anything off. It is diluted — a quart of water, of which only a little is mixed with milk when wanted — but the recipe still directs that it be given to "feverish patients."
- Sale is restricted for a reasonUnprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted in a number of other countries. Commercial bitter almond extract is processed to be free of hydrogen cyanide; whole raw bitter almonds are not.
- Sweet almonds alone are a different drinkThe sweet-almond half of this formula is simply blanched almonds pounded and steeped — the ancestor of every carton of almond milk sold today. If you want almond milk, use a current recipe with sweet almonds only and leave this one on the page.
- Reading the rest of the entryOrange-flower water is distilled from bitter-orange blossom, still sold in Middle Eastern and baking aisles; it is added here in drops to stop the almonds oiling as they are pounded. "Probable cost, 4d." is fourpence — the book gives a probable cost, and a "sufficient for", with each entry.
Almond milk is one of the oldest continuously made non-dairy liquids in European cookery: medieval kitchens leaned on it heavily because it kept better than cow's milk in warm weather and, being no animal product, was permitted on fast days, when the calendar forbade dairy for a large part of the year. By the nineteenth century it had shifted from the everyday larder to the sickroom, which is where Cassell's places it — a cooling drink of the kind pressed on fever patients. The bitter almonds are there for flavour, in the same spirit as the almond essence in a Victorian pudding.