Important: Safety Warning
This page contains a formula or preparation using substances now known to be dangerously toxic, such as arsenic, mercury, lead, or cyanide compounds. Exposure to these substances can cause severe poisoning, permanent injury, or death.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Noyeau, Imitation
This is a liqueur with an agreeable nutty taste. It should only be partaken of, however, in small quantities in consequence of the considerable proportion of prussic acid which it contains. Take three ounces of bruised bitter almonds, one quart of spirit, and a pound of sugar dissolved in three-quarters of a pint of water. Macerate for ten days, shaking the vessel at frequent intervals; at the end of that time let it rest for a few days, then decant the clear liquid. Apricots or peach-kernels, with the shells bruised, may be substituted for the almonds.
This is a bitter-almond cordial, and the book itself concedes that the flavour it prizes comes from prussic acid. That is the whole problem with it.
- The hazard is the flavourBitter almonds and apricot and peach kernels contain amygdalin, which the plant's own enzymes convert to hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid) as soon as the kernel is bruised and wetted. The almond scent and the poison are the same chemistry; you cannot keep one and lose the other by adjusting the method.
- Three ounces is not a traceThree ounces of bruised bitter almonds macerated into a quart of spirit puts an unmeasured but substantial quantity of cyanide into a drink that is served by the glass. The recipe's own defence is that it should be taken "in small quantities" — a dosing instruction, not a safety margin, and one the drinker controls rather than the cook.
- Alcohol extracts it efficientlyTen days of maceration in spirit at strength is a thorough extraction. Nothing in the process drives off the volatile cyanide, since there is no heating step at any point, and decanting the clear liquid removes only the solids.
- Kernels are no saferThe suggested substitution of apricot or peach kernels with the shells bruised is if anything the more concentrated route; apricot kernels are a recognised source of acute cyanide poisoning and are subject to consumption limits in several countries.
- Bitter almonds are restricted for this reasonSweet almonds from a supermarket are a different cultivar and will not produce this flavour. Bitter almonds cannot be sold for eating in the United States and are controlled elsewhere, which is a fair indication of how the ingredient is now regarded.
- If you want the flavourCommercial noyau, amaretto and almond extracts are made with the cyanide removed or with benzaldehyde supplying the scent alone. Use a current recipe or a bought bottle; there is no home adjustment of this formula worth attempting.
Noyau (more often noyeau in Victorian spelling, from the French noyau, "stone" or "kernel") was a stone-fruit cordial associated with Martinique and with the Dutch and French liqueur trade, and it reached England as an expensive imported bottle. Household manuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries answered that expense with imitation formulas like this one, steeping bitter almonds or cracked peach and apricot stones in spirit and sugar syrup — the same logic that produced homemade ratafia and orgeat, where the kernel of the fruit was treated as a flavouring in its own right. The book is unusually frank in naming the prussic acid, which shows that the danger was understood well before it was regulated: chemists had identified hydrogen cyanide in bitter almond water by the early nineteenth century. The advice to drink it sparingly, rather than to leave it alone, marks how differently a known poison could be treated when it was also a fashionable taste.