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Blancmange
Blanch ten (only) bitter and two ounces of sweet almonds, and pound them to a paste, adding by degrees a third of a pint of cold water; let it stand till settled, and strain off the liquid. Put into a pint of milk five ounces of loaf sugar, two inches of stick vanilla, and two of cinnamon, and pour it into an enamelled saucepan. Boil slowly till the sugar is dissolved, then stir in one ounce of isinglass, and strain all into a basin; add the liquid from the almonds, with a gill of cream. When cold, pour the mixture into a mould and put it in a cool place till it is firmly set. Probable cost, about 2s. Sufficient to fill a quart mould.
This is a classic almond-milk jelly, but its flavouring is the problem: bitter almonds are a cyanide source, and here they are used raw and uncooked in a cold-set dessert. The rest of the method is sound period practice; the almonds put it out of reach.
- Bitter almonds are the hinge, and they failBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste with cold water does. The original writer's parenthetical "(only)" at least signals that the number was not to be exceeded, though whether that was for safety or simply because bitter almonds overpower the dish is not stated.
- No step removes the toxinThe almond liquid is strained in after the milk has been boiled, so nothing in the recipe heats or drives off the cyanide. Commercial bitter-almond products are processed to remove it; a domestic mortar does not.
- Dose is unpredictableAmygdalin content varies widely between kernels and varieties, so ten almonds is not a measurable dose. A quart mould also serves a household, children included, and the margin for a small body is much narrower.
- AvailabilityUnprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries, which is why you are unlikely to be able to source them at all.
- Bitter almond essence is not a substitute hereModern "almond extract" or essence is benzaldehyde-based and carries no cyanide, but it is not a like-for-like swap for pounded kernels steeped in water. Use a current blancmange recipe rather than patching this one.
- For reading, not cookingTwo other details date the page: isinglass is a fish-derived setting agent long since displaced by leaf gelatine, and "loaf sugar" means sugar broken from a cone, which had to be dissolved rather than sprinkled. A gill is a quarter of a pint — 5 fl oz in imperial measure.
Blancmange — from the medieval French blanc manger, "white food" — began life as a savoury-sweet dish of pounded almonds, capon or fish and rice, and narrowed to a moulded white dessert in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Almonds were central to the older versions, though by the Victorian period many blancmanges were set with cornflour or arrowroot and contained no almonds at all; adding a few bitter almonds to a larger weight of sweet ones was one way of getting a pronounced marzipan note. The setting agent placed here in the same sentence tells its own story: isinglass, made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, was the fine cook's gelatine before refined sheet gelatine became cheap and reliable. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a large late-Victorian household compendium, gives a "probable cost" for its dishes; 2s. for a quart mould was not a trivial sum.