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NOYEAU (made with Honey)
Blanch and pound three ounces of bitter and one of sweet almonds. Put them into a jar, pour over them a quart of pure brandy or whisky, and leave them to infuse for three days, shaking them every now and then. Strain the liquid carefully through filtering-paper, and add one pound of loaf sugar dissolved in half a pint of boiling water, and two table-spoonfuls of fine honey. Bottle for use. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the spirit. Sufficient for three pints of noyeau.
This is a home cordial built on bitter almonds, and that single ingredient puts it outside what can responsibly be made now. The notes below explain the chemistry and the period vocabulary rather than offering a working method.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the enzyme emulsin converts to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernels are crushed and wetted. Pounding three ounces and steeping them in spirit for three days is an efficient way to extract that cyanide into the liquid, and no straining or filtering removes it.
- The quantity is far out of rangeThree ounces is on the order of seventy to a hundred bitter almond kernels, depending on size. Commonly cited toxicology figures put the adult danger zone at a few dozen raw kernels; here the whole yield is concentrated into three pints of drink that will be taken by the glass, and the only heat applied is the boiling water used to dissolve the sugar.
- Heat would not have helpedSome almond preparations of the period were baked or boiled, which destroys the enzyme and volatilises the cyanide. This one is essentially a cold infusion: the only heat is the half-pint of boiling water used to dissolve the sugar, added after the liquid has been strained, which does not meaningfully reduce the toxicity.
- Availability todayUnprocessed bitter almonds are restricted or unavailable for retail sale in the UK, the EU and the United States for exactly this reason. Almond extract and commercial noyaux use benzaldehyde or heat-treated kernels, which give the flavour without the glycoside.
- If you want the flavourUse a current recipe for an almond liqueur or buy a commercial crème de noyaux. Do not attempt to scale this one down.
- Reading the old measuresFor interest only: a quart here is the imperial 40 fl oz, half a pint is 10 fl oz, and loaf sugar means hard refined sugar broken from a cone, equivalent to ordinary white sugar. "Probable cost, 1s." is one shilling, the book's standard costing note.
Noyeau — more usually spelt noyau, from the French noyau, the stone or kernel of a fruit — was a sweetened spirit flavoured with the kernels of peaches, apricots, cherries or bitter almonds, all of which share the same almond-like aroma and the same cyanogenic chemistry. Its origins are contested: it is often traced to the French Antilles, and to Martinique in particular, though French noyaux such as Noyau de Poissy are at least as long established. It reached British households as both an imported bottle and a thing to be made at home from brandy, sugar and a handful of kernels. Cassell's implies more than one version, this one distinguished by its spoonfuls of honey. The nineteenth century had in fact recorded fatal poisonings from almond-flavoured essences and from prussic acid in kitchen use, and books like this went on setting down the old proportions.