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Almond Pudding, Boiled
Blanch and pound with a little water three ounces of sweet and four or five bitter almonds; add a pint of new milk, sugar to taste, a little nutmeg, a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly, a table-spoonful of grated bread-crumbs, two eggs well beaten, and lastly, the whites of two eggs whisked to a froth. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mould, and steam gently till the pudding is set. When done, let it stand for a few minutes before turning out. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for four persons.
The problem is in the first line. Bitter almonds are not a stronger-flavoured version of sweet almonds; they are a different thing, and this pudding is built around four or five of them.
- Bitter almonds release cyanideBitter almond kernels contain amygdalin, which the enzyme emulsin converts to hydrogen cyanide once the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what happens when they are pounded with water here. Figures for a single bitter almond are usually given as roughly one to three milligrams of releasable cyanide.
- The quantity is not trivialFour or five kernels among four people is the sort of amount Victorian cooks treated as a flavouring, and it works out at about one kernel a head; the margin between a flavouring dose and a harmful one is nonetheless narrower for a child or a small adult than most modern cooks would accept.
- Steaming does not make it safeSteaming cannot be relied on -- Hydrogen cyanide is volatile and long cooking drives off some of what was generated during pounding, but a gently steamed pudding in a closed, buttered mould retains volatiles rather than losing them, and there is no way to know how much remains.
- You cannot buy them anywayUnprocessed bitter almonds are not sold for food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. What is sold as "bitter almond extract" is generally benzaldehyde, synthetic or debittered, and is a different product from the kernels called for here.
- Substitution changes the dishLeaving the bitter almonds out gives a plain almond milk pudding rather than the intensely marzipan-scented thing intended. If that is what you want, use a current recipe for a steamed almond pudding.
- Other archaisms, for reading"New milk" is simply fresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured. A pint here is the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, and the "probable cost, 1s" is a shilling; a "probable cost" is given for most entries of this kind.
Bitter almonds ran through European pudding, custard and confectionery work for centuries because a few kernels pounded into a pint of milk gave a strong almond perfume that a much larger quantity of sweet almonds could not. Ratafia, noyau and the old almond "biscuits" all depended on the same kernels, as did the practice of substituting peach or apricot stones, which carry the same compound. Amygdalin was isolated by chemists in the early nineteenth century, and poisonings from essence of almonds were reported during the period, though the recipes stayed in print. Steamed and boiled puddings like this one, set in a buttered mould over water rather than baked, were a standard sweet course of a middle-class English dinner in this period.