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Almonds, Sugared
Boil together a syrup made of one pound of sugar and one pint of water. Blanch one pound of sweet almonds, and put them in; let them boil for some minutes. Take them out and drain them; let the syrup boil until thick, then return the almonds, and take them out when coated with sugar, which will be in a minute or two. They should be thoroughly dried, and kept in a warm place. Time to boil ten minutes.
A two-stage sugar coating: the nuts are first candied in thin syrup, then dipped again once the syrup has reduced to a heavy thread. The whole thing hinges on how far you take the second boil.
- The hinge: the second boilThe book gives no temperature, but "until thick" corresponds roughly to the soft- to firm-ball stage (about 240-250F on a modern thermometer), where the syrup will set to an opaque crust rather than a sticky glaze. Boiled too little it stays tacky; taken much further the syrup passes into the hard-crack and then caramel stages and you are making something closer to praline.
- Sweet almondsThe specification is not decorative. Bitter almonds were sold alongside sweet ones in Victorian grocers and contain amygdalin, which yields hydrogen cyanide. Ordinary supermarket almonds are sweet almonds and are the right thing here.
- BlanchingThirty to sixty seconds in boiling water, then into cold; the skins slip off between finger and thumb. Dry the blanched nuts well before they go into the syrup or the water will thin it.
- Syrup proportionsOne pound sugar to one pint water is about 2 cups sugar to 2 1/2 cups water in US measure — a thin syrup by design, since it has to penetrate the almonds before it thickens.
- "Boil for some minutes"Read this with the closing note, "time to boil ten minutes": the almonds soak up syrup and firm slightly during that first stage. The second dip really is a minute or two, no more.
- Separating the nutsTurn them out onto parchment or an oiled marble slab and part them with two forks as they cool, or they will set in a single sheet.
- Drying and storageA "warm place" would have been somewhere like a plate rack or the side of a cooling range; the nearest modern equivalent is an oven at its lowest setting for an hour or so. Store airtight, as the sugar shell draws damp from the air and can turn sticky in a humid kitchen.
- YieldA pound of almonds coated from a pound of sugar gives rather less than 2 lb of finished sweets, since much of the syrup evaporates or stays behind in the pan.
Sugared almonds are among the oldest surviving confections in Europe, generally traced to the medieval comfit, in which seeds, spices or nuts were coated by repeated dippings in boiling sugar — work done by apothecaries as much as cooks, since sugar was reckoned a medicine. By the nineteenth century the trade had mechanised the process into revolving copper pans, and the results were sold as dragées and Jordan almonds; Cassell's method is the domestic shortcut, two dips rather than twenty, and gives a rougher shell than the glassy commercial article. That the book bothers to say "sweet almonds" reflects a period when bitter almonds sat on the same shelf, sold for flavouring, and confusion between the two was a real hazard.