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Cheesecakes, Almond
Blanch and pound a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds and four or five bitter ones; add a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted sugar, a quarter of a pound of butter, the thin rind of a lemon minced as finely as possible, the juice of half a lemon, and a table-spoonful of sherry or brandy. Line tartlet-tins with good puff paste, and just before filling them, add the yolks of four and the whites of two eggs. Bake in a quick oven. Time to bake, fifteen or twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2d. each. Sufficient for two dozen cheesecakes. (See ALMOND CHEESECAKES.)
The problem is in the first line. Everything else here is ordinary Victorian tartlet work, but the four or five bitter almonds are the reason this page should be read rather than cooked from.
- Bitter almonds are the hinge, and they are toxicBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzymes convert to hydrogen cyanide once the kernel is crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding them in a mortar does. They were used in Victorian kitchens as a flavouring in small counted numbers, and the poisonous nature of the kernel was known to period writers, though this recipe says nothing of it.
- The quantity is not reassuringly smallAmygdalin content varies widely between kernels and varieties, so "four or five" is not a measured dose of anything. Spread over two dozen cheesecakes the per-portion exposure is low, and baking drives off much of the volatile hydrogen cyanide, but the recipe gives no way to know what you are actually working with.
- You cannot buy them anywayYou are unlikely to be able to buy them — Raw bitter almonds are not permitted for sale as a food ingredient in the United States, and several other jurisdictions restrict raw cyanogenic kernels or cap hydrocyanic acid in flavourings. If a bag labelled "bitter almonds" turns up at a market, treat it with suspicion rather than as an ordinary food ingredient.
- Sweet almonds are not a fixLeaving the bitter almonds out changes the dish rather than rescuing it — the whole point of the four or five was the marzipan note that plain sweet almonds do not carry. Anyone who wants an almond cheesecake of this type should work from a current recipe written for modern ingredients.
- Cross-referenceThe book's closing pointer to ALMOND CHEESECAKES sends the reader to another entry; what that entry says cannot be judged from this page. Bitter almonds appear in many period almond confections.
- On the costing"Probable cost, 2d. each" is pre-decimal British currency, two pence in a system of twelve pence to the shilling. It is a useful marker of how Cassell's readers judged a recipe, and no guide at all to what the ingredients cost now.
Almond cheesecakes belong to a long English line of "cheesecakes" in which cheese is often absent altogether — by the eighteenth century the word had drifted to mean any small rich tartlet baked in a pastry case, whether the filling was curd, lemon, or pounded almonds bound with butter and egg. The bitter almond was the standard shortcut to intensity: a handful of kernels from the bitter almond tree, or from apricot and peach stones, gave the flavour that commercial almond essence later supplied synthetically as benzaldehyde. What has changed is that regulators, rather than the cook's judgement, now decide the matter.