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PETITS MORCEAUX (for Dessert)
Rub four ounces of loaf-sugar upon the rind of half a lemon; crush it to powder and mix with it the white of one egg which has been whisked to a firm froth, and six ounces of sweet almonds, and six bitter ones which have been blanched and chopped fine. Roll out half a pound of good puff-paste to the thickness of half an inch, spread the mixture upon it, and stamp it out in fancy shapes, such as rings, diamonds, hearts, etc. Bake the morceaux on a buttered tin in a well-heated oven, and let them get cold before they are used. Time to bake, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s.
A Victorian almond-topped puff pastry biscuit. The recipe cannot be made as printed because it calls for bitter almonds, which are not a food ingredient in any modern sense.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed, chewed or wetted. Six chopped bitter almonds distributed through a whole batch is a small quantity per piece, but the amount in any one morceau is uncontrolled, and their sale as food is restricted or prohibited in the US, UK and EU for this reason. Baking will drive off some of the cyanide, but how much is not predictable from the recipe as written.
- Why they were usedBitter almonds were a common Victorian source of intense almond flavour, carrying the same compound (benzaldehyde) that gives modern almond extract its character. Recipes of the period habitually call for them in small numbers alongside sweet almonds. If you want this flavour, a current recipe using almond extract should be used instead.
- Rubbing sugar on the lemon"Rub four ounces of loaf-sugar upon the rind" means dragging a hard sugar loaf across the zest so the sugar abrades the oil out of the peel — an oleo-saccharum. Loaf sugar was cut from a cone of refined sugar and is not the same as a modern sugar cube in hardness.
- Oven"Well-heated oven" is a relative instruction; Cassell's gives no temperatures. It implies a hot oven, of the sort puff paste needs for the layers to lift, but a nut-and-egg-white topping will brown fast at that heat.
- Thickness and shapeHalf an inch of rolled puff paste is very thick for a small stamped biscuit; expect considerable rise and a soft, layered rather than crisp result. The morceaux are stamped after the topping is spread, so a sharp cutter and a firm downward press matter, otherwise the layers seal and will not rise.
- Yield and costThe recipe gives no yield. Half a pound of paste rolled to half an inch covers a fairly small area, so expect considerably fewer shapes than a thinner-rolled biscuit dough would give, depending on the cutter. The "probable cost, 1s." is a period pricing note, not a modern guide.
Petits morceaux is simply "little pieces" — one of hundreds of French-labelled trifles that Cassell's assembled for the English middle-class dessert course, where a plate of small sweet biscuits sat alongside fruit, ices and wine. The distinction between sweet and bitter almonds runs right through Victorian confectionery: sweet almonds gave body and richness, while a handful of bitter ones supplied the sharp marzipan note. Cooks of the period could reach the same note by other means: bitter almond and ratafia essences were commercially available through the nineteenth century, and peach and apricot kernels were used to the same end. Bitter almonds appear routinely in nineteenth-century ratafias, macaroons, custards and almond puddings. The gradual disappearance of bitter almonds from domestic recipes over the twentieth century is often attributed in part to the rise of commercially manufactured almond essence, which delivered the same flavour compound without the cyanogenic glycoside attached to it, though regulatory restriction on the sale of bitter almonds also played its part.