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Irish Rock
A sweet for dessert, composed of almonds, sugar, and butter pounded together, and moulded into an egg-like shape. It has a very pretty appearance when arranged to contrast with green sweetmeats and bright-coloured preserved fruits. Wash the salt from half a pound of butter, and beat into it a quarter of a pound of finely-powdered sugar; blanch a pound of sweet almonds and an ounce of bitter. Pound these in a mortar, reserving enough of the sweet almonds to spike for ornamenting the dish when sent to table; add the butter and sugar, with about a quarter of a glass of brandy, and pound until smooth and white, when, after having become firm, it may be shaped with a couple of spoons. It should be placed high on a glass dish with a decoration of green sweetmeats, the spiked almonds, and a sprig of myrtle. Garnish with any green fruits or sweetmeats.
The problem here is not the technique but one ingredient: the recipe calls for an ounce of raw bitter almonds in an uncooked sweet.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding in a mortar with brandy does. An ounce amounts to a couple of dozen kernels' worth of concentrated glycoside in a dish meant to be eaten by the spoonful, and nothing in this preparation destroys it. Sale of bitter almonds for eating is restricted or prohibited in many countries for this reason.
- Nothing is cookedUnlike a macaroon or a ratafia biscuit, where bitter almonds appear in small quantity and are baked, Irish rock is pounded raw and served raw. There is no heating step at any point to drive off volatiles or denature anything.
- Not a matter of scaling downThe safe course is a current almond-paste or dessert recipe, not an adjusted version of this one. We are not going to supply a conversion that implies the method is sound.
- What the period language means"Green sweetmeats" are candied angelica, greengages or similar preserved fruit, used purely for colour contrast; "spiked" almonds are blanched kernels split lengthways and stuck into the surface like porcupine quills. The myrtle sprig is table decoration, not an ingredient.
- Washing the butterRinsing salted butter under cold water and working it dry appears in period recipes where unsalted butter could not be relied on. The instruction indicates the compiler assumed a salted butter of variable strength.
Irish rock belongs to a family of almond-and-butter dessert pastes that furnished the ornamental centre of the dessert course — the final service of fruit, nuts and sweetmeats set out after the cloth was drawn. It is presented as much for its looks as its flavour: piled high on a glass stand, spiked with split almonds and ringed with candied green fruit, it was a piece of table architecture. The connection to Ireland is obscure and the name is generally treated as traditional rather than documented. Bitter almonds were an ordinary grocery item then, sold alongside sweet almonds to sharpen the flavour of almond preparations, and Victorian cookbooks used them freely — a practice that later food-safety regulation put an end to.