Home › The Principles of Cookery › Almond Sauce
Almond Sauce
Blanch and pound two ounces of sweet almonds with a few drops of water. Pour over them, boiling, half a pint of new milk. Mix a tea-spoonful of flour smoothly with a little water and the yolk of one egg. Stir all together briskly, over a moderate fire, until it froths. Serve with any sweet pudding. Time, ten minutes to boil. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for a medium-sized pudding.
A thin almond custard poured over steamed and baked puddings. It is essentially a sweet pouring sauce, and the whole thing turns on keeping the egg yolk below simmering point.
- The hinge: do not let it boilThe hinge: keep the heat gentle -- the book says "Time, ten minutes to boil," and the teaspoonful of flour does help protect the single yolk from curdling, but with so little liquid it is safer to hold the pan below a rolling boil, stirring constantly, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. That may happen in well under ten minutes.
- "A moderate fire"Medium-low heat on a modern burner. A heavy pan or a bowl over barely simmering water gives you far more margin with so small a quantity.
- Half a pint of new milkAn Imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. "New milk" is fresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured; whole milk is the correct substitute.
- Two ounces of sweet almondsRoughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of whole almonds. "Sweet" distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older sauces sometimes added for flavour and which are now restricted as a whole nut, though bitter-almond flavouring is still sold. Blanch by pouring boiling water over them, standing a minute, then slipping off the skins.
- Pounding, and the shortcutThe few drops of water stop the almonds turning oily in the mortar. Blanched almond flour, about 1/2 cup, gets you to the same place; grind in a processor if using whole nuts, pulsing so as not to make butter.
- TextureGround almonds will not dissolve. This recipe gives no straining step, so the sauce as written stays slightly gritty; alternatively steep the almonds in the hot milk for 15 minutes and strain before thickening for a smooth sauce.
- SweeteningNo sugar is specified, on the assumption the pudding carries it. A tablespoon or two of sugar whisked in with the yolk suits most modern palates.
- Yield and costMakes about 1¼ cups, enough for four to six servings. The "probable cost, 6d" is a period retail estimate and tells you only that almonds were a modest luxury.
Almond sauces of this kind descend from the almond milk that dominated medieval and early modern European cookery, where pounded almonds steeped in water stood in for dairy on fast days and kept better than milk in a warm kitchen. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the later nineteenth century the fasting logic had gone and almonds were simply a flavouring, so the sauce reverted to real milk with the nuts as a perfume. It sits in the book among a long rank of sweet pouring sauces interchangeable at the cook's discretion because a Victorian dinner expected a boiled or baked pudding, and a pudding expected a sauce; the recipe's brevity and its closing line, "Serve with any sweet pudding," show it was meant as a template rather than a set dish.