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Neapolitan Cake
Blanch and pound to a smooth paste six ounces of sweet almonds and one ounce of bitter almonds, and whilst pounding them keep dropping in a little orange-flower water or rose-water to prevent them oiling. Add a pinch of salt, the grated rind of a large lemon, four ounces of fresh butter, half a pound of sifted loaf sugar, and ten ounces of flour. When these ingredients are thoroughly mixed, work them together with the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, and leave them in a cool place for half an hour.
Roll the paste out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, stamp it out in rounds about the size of an ordinary saucer, lay these upon a floured tin, and bake in a good oven. When they are firm and lightly coloured take them out, trim the edges, and when quite cold lay them one upon another, and spread a thick layer of differently coloured jam on the top of each round; and as each piece is put on press it lightly with the hand, so that the jam shall make the rounds adhere together, and so form one cake. Before serving sift a little pink sugar over the top, or garnish as fancy dictates. Time to bake the rounds, about half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
The construction is sound Victorian confectionery, but the almond quantities put this one out of reach. The notes below explain the problem and gloss a few terms that have shifted since the book was published.
- The bitter almonds are the problemAn ounce of bitter almonds is the hinge of this recipe and the reason it should not be reproduced. Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernels are crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding them to a paste with rose-water does. Raw bitter almonds are not permitted for retail food sale in the United States and are restricted elsewhere.
- Quantity, not traceA drop of bitter-almond flavouring in a commercial extract has been processed to remove the toxic fraction. One ounce of whole raw kernels, divided among six or eight portions of a cake, is a different order of thing entirely. Use a current recipe if you want a jam-layered almond cake.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in a hard cone, to be broken and pounded at home. "Sifted loaf sugar" is here simply fine white sugar; the cone form has largely disappeared from British kitchens.
- Pink sugarFine sugar tinted red, cochineal being the usual colouring of the period, used for finishing sweets.
- Orange-flower and rose-waterBoth were staple flavourings in nineteenth-century English baking, far more common then than now. Here they serve a mechanical purpose as well — the liquid keeps the pounded nuts from releasing their oil and turning greasy.
- Probable costTwo shillings and sixpence, a figure Cassell's gives throughout so that a housekeeper could price a dish before committing to it. It says a good deal about the intended readership that almonds and six egg yolks counted as an ordinary expense.
"Neapolitan" in Victorian confectionery rarely meant anything strictly Neapolitan; it seems to have functioned as trade shorthand for something built in distinct layers or colours, the same sense that survives in Neapolitan ice cream. Here it describes a stack of thin almond-paste biscuits mortared together with jams of contrasting colour, so that a cut slice shows bands — a construction closer to a pastry-cook's window display than to a household sponge, and one that depends on the rounds being baked crisp enough to hold their shape under pressure. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the later nineteenth century for middle-class households running a servant or two, is full of these semi-professional set pieces printed alongside instructions for boiling a potato. The heavy use of sweet and bitter almonds together is characteristic of the period: bitter kernels were sold openly by grocers and chemists as a flavouring, their danger understood in a general way but not regulated as it is now.