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PRINCE CONSORT'S PUDDING (another way)
Crumble six ounces of stale spongecake. Pour over them milk flavoured with almonds prepared as follows. Blanch two ounces of sweet almonds and four bitter ones. Simmer them softly for half an hour in a quarter of a pint of milk, then pound them to a paste, and mix them again with the milk. Add to the mixture a pinch of salt, two ounces of powdered sugar, the yolks of four eggs and the white of one, three table-spoonfuls of thick cream, and two of brandy. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, then pour the pudding into a buttered mould, steam, and serve according to the directions given in the previous recipe. Time to steam, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian steamed sponge-and-custard pudding whose flavouring is the problem: bitter almonds are the source of the almond taste here, and they are not a food ingredient by modern standards.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed, chewed or wetted — exactly what pounding them to a paste in warm milk does. Their sale for eating is prohibited or tightly restricted in the UK, the US, Australia and much of the EU, and there is no reliable way to judge the dose in four unstandardised kernels.
- Why the quantity mattersAmygdalin content varies widely between individual kernels and varieties, so "four bitter ones" is not a measurable dose. Children are far more sensitive than adults, and this is a pudding sized for three or four people at a family table.
- The simmering does not fix itHalf an hour in milk will drive off some hydrogen cyanide, but heat treatment is not a reliable safeguard at domestic scale.
- The rest of the puddingThe sponge, egg yolks, cream and brandy are unremarkable and thoroughly cooked by three-quarters of an hour of steaming. It is only the flavouring that puts the dish out of reach; a current recipe for a steamed almond sponge pudding should be used instead.
- Reading the costing"1s. 6d." is one shilling and sixpence. The book gives a probable cost for its recipes as a matter of course. It fixes the book firmly in the pre-decimal era and says nothing about modern ingredient cost.
Cassell's carries several puddings named for Prince Albert, Victoria's Prince Consort, who died in 1861 — attaching royal names to rich moulded puddings was common in nineteenth-century cookery writing, and the recipes so named rarely have any documented connection to the person. The almond flavouring is of its period: bitter almonds appear routinely alongside sweet ones in Victorian and Edwardian recipes for a pronounced marzipan note, before synthetic benzaldehyde essence became cheap and widely available. The toxicity was understood in general terms — bitter almond water appears in the pharmacopoeia — but a few kernels in a family pudding were evidently not treated with the same caution as concentrated distillates. Modern regulation takes the opposite view, and the ingredient has largely disappeared from domestic kitchens while the flavour it produced has not.