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Ratafia Cake
Blanch and pound together to a smooth paste six ounces of sweet almonds and two ounces of bitter almonds. Add the whites of two eggs beaten to a solid froth, and beat in very gradually half a pound of loaf sugar powdered and sifted, half a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, and the yolks of eight eggs. Beat the mixture thoroughly. Add two ounces of fine flour, and the remaining whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Butter a mould, half fill it with the mixture, and bake the cake in a slow oven. Let it stand a few minutes, shake it to loosen it, take it out carefully, and set it upon a reversed sieve till cold. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 2s.
The failure point here is the two ounces of bitter almonds, which is not a flavouring quantity by any modern measure. The rest of the method is unremarkable; the almonds are the reason this page is for reading rather than baking.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste with egg white does. Two ounces is roughly fifty to sixty nuts, well past the range in which cyanide exposure is a theoretical concern rather than a real one.
- Baking does not fix itSome hydrogen cyanide is volatile and driven off by heat, but a cake batter sealed in a buttered mould in a slow oven is not a reliable way to remove it, and nothing in the method guarantees how much remains. The historical assumption that cooking rendered bitter almonds harmless is not one to rely on.
- The ingredient is effectively unobtainableThe ingredient is effectively unobtainable here -- Unprocessed bitter almonds cannot lawfully be sold at retail in the United States, and their sale is restricted in the United Kingdom; in parts of the EU they remain available for baking, subject to limits on hydrocyanic acid. What is sold as bitter almond flavouring today is usually benzaldehyde or an extract from apricot or peach kernels processed to remove the cyanogenic compounds; it is not the same material this recipe means.
- Ratafia biscuits are not a substitute eitherCommercial ratafia biscuits, sold as a trifle and charlotte ingredient, were originally flavoured with bitter almond; those on sale now are generally not. They will not reproduce what this cake was, and crumbling them into a sponge batter is a different recipe altogether.
- What to do insteadIf you want an almond sponge of this type, use a current recipe written for sweet almonds and a modern almond extract. Do not attempt to scale the bitter almonds down and proceed.
- Reading the originalFor context: "loaf sugar powdered and sifted" is hard refined sugar pounded and sieved fine, for which fine granulated or caster sugar stands in; a slow oven is usually reckoned at roughly 275-300F; and "probable cost, 2s" is the standard costing line found in Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, from which this recipe appears to come — two shillings, a real sum for a household cake in the late nineteenth century.
Ratafia was originally a cordial, a spirit steeped with fruit kernels and spices, and the word came to stand for the almond-kernel flavour itself rather than the drink; it is generally traced through French usage to a Creole or Malay origin, though the etymology has never been settled. By the time Cassell's was compiled, "ratafia" on an English bill of fare meant almond flavour in any form — the little domed macaroon-like biscuits, a flavouring for creams and puddings, and cakes such as this one. The characteristic scent came from bitter almonds, which the Victorian kitchen used freely and in quantity, alongside laurel and peach leaves and apricot kernels, all of them sources of the same compound.