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Ratafia Biscuits
Blanch and pound together to a smooth paste three ounces of sweet almonds and two ounces of bitter almonds, and add, whilst pounding, a dessert-spoonful of brandy and the whites of two eggs beaten to a firm froth; stir in half a pound of loaf sugar powdered and sifted, and beat the mixture till it is a firm smooth paste. Bake one or two little cakes to test the lightness of the paste, and if they are heavy add gradually the whites of one or two additional eggs. Lay the mixture on writing-paper in rounds the size of a halfpenny, and bake these on tins in a moderate oven till they are lightly browned. Take them from the paper as soon as cold. Some cooks add a spoonful of flour to the above preparation. Or, blanch and pound together to a smooth paste two ounces of sweet Jordan almonds and three-quarters of an ounce of bitter almonds. Add gradually the whites of two eggs beaten to a firm froth, half a pound of loaf sugar powdered and sifted, and half a tea-spoonful of orange-flower water; beat the mixture till it is a firm paste. Test the ratafias, beat in addition two whites of eggs if required, and bake as before in a moderate oven. Time to bake, twelve to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per pound.
The hazard here is not the technique, which is straightforward meringue-and-almond work, but the defining ingredient: bitter almonds, used in quantities no modern authority would sanction.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste does. The first version calls for two ounces, the second three-quarters of an ounce, both far beyond any tolerable intake.
- The quantity is not marginalTwo ounces is roughly fifty to sixty kernels. Toxicological reference figures put the dangerous range for an adult in the region of a few dozen kernels, and much lower for a child. A batch of these biscuits concentrates that load into small sweet rounds that are easy to eat by the handful.
- Baking does not make them safeSome hydrogen cyanide is driven off by heat, but the loss is partial and depends on temperature, time and how enclosed the mixture is. A twelve-minute bake in a moderate oven cannot be relied on to detoxify the paste, and the recipe was never written with that in mind.
- They are no longer sold as foodUnprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States, and several other jurisdictions restrict them. Apricot and peach kernels, often suggested as a stand-in, carry the same amygdalin and the same objection.
- What to do insteadUse a current ratafia or almond macaroon recipe, which will get the same flavour from sweet almonds and a measured almond extract. We are not going to supply adjusted quantities for the version above.
- Reading the rest of itFor context: loaf sugar is refined sugar sold then in cones and broken up, for which granulated or caster sugar stands in; "writing-paper" serves the function of modern baking parchment, and the recipe has you take the biscuits off it once they are cold; a "moderate oven" is usually read as somewhere around 325-375F, though the book gives no temperature. The 1s. 6d. per pound is a costing note for the household accounts, not an instruction.
Ratafia was originally a flavoured cordial — the word's origin is not settled, though it is often linked to French colonial usage in the Caribbean, and by the eighteenth century in England it meant a sweet liqueur scented with almond or fruit kernels. The little almond biscuits took their name from the same flavour, and by the Victorian period they had a settled place in the confectioner's repertoire: served with wine, crumbled into trifles and charlottes, or lining the base of a moulded cream. Before commercial flavouring extracts, the sharp benzaldehyde note of a kernel was the usual way to get that taste, and cookery writers of the era called for bitter almonds, ratafia essence and noyau freely. Cassell's, compiling in the 1870s and reprinted for decades after, passed on a formula of the kind then current.