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Almond Spice Biscuits
Put two pounds of loaf sugar into a saucepan with sufficient water to dissolve it. Have ready two pounds of flour, mixed with two pounds of sweet almonds blanched and pounded, a whole nutmeg grated, the rind of a lemon finely chopped, and a tea-spoonful of finely-ground ginger. Pour the hot syrup into this mixture, and make it into a stiff paste. Roll it into a long, thick piece, and bake in a quick oven. When sufficiently cooked, cut it into convenient pieces, which should be placed before the fire for a little while to dry. These biscuits should not be exposed to the air. Time to bake, about an hour. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.
A hot-syrup almond paste baked as a log and then sliced and dried — the same two-stage method behind biscotti and mandelbrot. The quantities are enormous by modern standards and the oven instruction contradicts itself, so read the whole thing before starting.
- Scale it downTwo pounds each of sugar, flour and almonds makes roughly six pounds of dough — several dozen biscuits. A quarter of the recipe (8 oz each) fills one baking sheet and is a sensible trial batch.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up with nippers. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent; use just enough water to wet it, a few tablespoons per pound, and stir over heat only until clear.
- Oven temperatureA "quick oven" is usually reckoned at around 400-450F, which risks scorching a thick log of sugar paste well before an hour is up. For a log 2 inches thick, 350F for 30-40 minutes is the safer bet; the hour presumably applies to the full six-pound mass rather than to a trial batch.
- Sweet almondsThe distinction from bitter almonds mattered in the period because both were sold. Any modern blanched almond is a sweet almond. Pound or pulse them to a coarse meal, not a butter — visible fragments are what gives the biscuit its texture.
- Whole nutmegOne nutmeg grated yields about 2 to 3 teaspoons, which is assertive but correct against six pounds of dough. Scale it with everything else rather than keeping it whole.
- Working the pastePour the syrup in hot and mix fast with a wooden spoon; the paste stiffens as it cools and becomes unworkable. Shape the log while it is still warm.
- The second dryingCutting the baked log and returning the slices to gentle heat is the step that makes these keep. A 250-275F oven for 20-30 minutes, turning once, does what "before the fire" did.
- Storage"Should not be exposed to the air" means an airtight tin. The sugar in them is hygroscopic and they soften quickly on an open plate.
The recipe belongs among the plain sugar-and-almond keeping biscuits that ran through nineteenth-century British baking, close cousins of the older Italian biscotti — literally twice-cooked — and of the German and Central European almond breads that were sliced from a baked log and dried a second time. The technique is older than chemical leavening: with no soda or baking powder, structure comes from the hot syrup binding flour and ground almonds into a paste stiff enough to hold its shape, and keeping quality comes from the sugar and the second drying rather than from any preservative. The listed cost of 3s. 6d. may hint at how expensive almonds were relative to flour; a batch this size would plausibly have been a store-cupboard investment, made once and drawn on over time.