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Piedmont Cake
Take four ounces of sweet almonds and eight bitter ones. Blanch them, and pound them in a mortar, putting in half a tea-spoonful of orange-flower water every now and then to prevent them oiling. When they are soft and smooth, soak them in half a pint of cream for three-quarters of an hour, then pass the cream through a jelly-bag, and rub the almond-paste well with the back of a wooden spoon to squeeze as much of it into the liquid as possible. Keep the flavoured cream in a cool place until wanted for use. Prepare two ounces of candied peel and four ounces of pistachio kernels, by cutting the peel into small pieces, and blanching the pistachios and cutting them into quarters; then put both aside until required. Beat three-quarters of a pound of butter to a cream. Add gradually four ounces of powdered sugar, half a salt-spoonful of salt, a quarter of a pound of dried flour, and the well-beaten yolks of two eggs; and when these are thoroughly mixed, work in gradually three-quarters of a pound more of flour, two more egg yolks, and four whole eggs. Beat the paste with a wooden spoon. Dissolve three-quarters of a pound of German yeast in a little lukewarm water, and knead it into the batter with the almond-flavoured cream. Butter a large mould, pour in the mixture, and put the pistachios and candied peel evenly round the inside. When the cake has sufficiently risen, bake in a moderate oven until it is lightly browned. When it is done enough (which may be ascertained by sticking a skewer into the centre: if it can be drawn out dry, the cake is ready), turn it out of the mould.
This is a rich yeast-raised almond cake in the babà/kugelhopf family, but two things in it put it outside modern practice: the bitter almonds, and a yeast quantity that cannot be right as printed.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted, which is exactly what pounding in a mortar and steeping in cream does; the flavoured cream then goes into the batter and is baked. Their sale for eating is restricted in the UK, the US and the EU because the dose in a domestic kitchen is uncontrolled. Eight almonds spread through a cake this size is a small quantity, but if you want this flavour, use a current recipe built on almond extract.
- The yeast figureThree-quarters of a pound of German (compressed fresh) yeast against the pound of flour the recipe calls for (a quarter-pound of dried flour plus three-quarters of a pound more) is many times a normal dose and would be inedible. Possibly a misprint for three-quarters of an ounce, which would be plausible for a rich, heavy, slow-rising batter. Treat the printed figure as unusable rather than as a measurement to convert.
- "German yeast"Compressed fresh baker's yeast, sold in damp cakes and dissolved in tepid water before use — distinct from the older brewer's barm. Modern fresh yeast is the direct descendant; instant dried yeast is roughly a third of the weight.
- Dried flourFlour spread in a warm place or a cooling oven to drive off moisture, then sieved. In a period of sacked, cellar-stored flour this mattered; with modern packaged flour it is redundant.
- Powdered sugarIn Victorian usage this means loaf sugar crushed and sieved fine — closer to caster sugar than to modern icing sugar, which contains anti-caking starch.
- A moderate oven350F / 175C. For a cake of this size and richness in a deep mould, expect well over an hour; the skewer test given in the original is the reliable guide.
- A salt-spoonfulThe smallest spoon of a Victorian cruet set, about a quarter of a teaspoon. Half of one is a pinch.
- The jelly-bagA close-woven flannel or muslin straining bag. A double layer of fine muslin in a sieve does the same work, and the instruction to press the almond paste hard with a wooden spoon is what actually gets the flavour into the cream.
Cakes carrying regional Italian names — Piedmont, Genoa, Savoy — were a fixture of nineteenth-century English confectionery books, and the names generally indicate a style rather than any documented provenance: Piedmont here signals the almonds, pistachios and candied peel of the north-Italian pastry tradition, filtered through French professional practice and then through an English kitchen. Structurally the cake is a yeast-raised enriched dough baked in a deep mould, the same family as the babà and the kugelhopf, from the period before chemical raising agents had fully displaced yeast in sweet baking. The bitter almonds are the period's ordinary flavouring: a handful of them among sweet almonds gave the marzipan-and-cherry note now supplied by extract, and they were sold openly by grocers and druggists throughout the century. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery compiled such recipes for a middle-class readership with a cook, which is why the almond cream is prepared, strained and set aside hours in advance without comment.}