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Rice Custard
Blanch six bitter almonds, and pound them to paste with two table-spoonfuls of rose-water, or, failing this, with a little water, to keep them from oiling. Mix an ounce of ground rice smoothly with a spoonful of cold milk, and add a pint of milk, half a pint of cream, the almonds, and a little sugar. Stir the mixture over the fire until it is lukewarm, then add gradually the yolks of three eggs. Stir the custard again until it begins to thicken, but it must not boil. Serve in cups with blanched and chopped almonds sprinkled on the top. Time to prepare, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d., with cream at 1s. 6d. per pint. Sufficient for a little more than a pint and a half of custard.
This is a stirred almond-and-rice custard of a type common in Victorian dessert cookery, but it is built on bitter almonds, which are not a food ingredient today. The notes below explain what the text says and why the dish cannot be reproduced.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste with rose-water does. The custard is never boiled, and gentle heating short of boiling cannot be relied on to drive off the volatile cyanide.
- The quantity is not trivialSix bitter almonds are pounded into a pint and a half of custard and divided between individual cups. Bitter almonds are restricted or unavailable for retail sale in a number of countries, including the United States, and no safe domestic quantity is established. A current recipe should be used instead.
- "Almond flavouring" is not the same thingModern almond extract and marzipan take their scent from benzaldehyde, made synthetically or derived from sources free of prussic acid. Reading the word "almonds" here as sweet almonds or extract misreads the recipe: the six bitter nuts were there for the stronger, sharper almond note that sweet almonds do not give.
- Uncooked yolks, uncooked custardUncooked yolks -- The instruction is to stir only until the mixture begins to thicken and never to boil. No temperature is given, and depending on how far the cook took it the three yolks may fall short of a temperature that would deal with salmonella; the recipe as printed is not a reliable model.
- Reading the measuresA pint here is the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so the liquid is roughly 2.5 cups milk and 1.25 cups cream. "Ground rice" is rice milled to a meal, coarser than cornflour and than modern rice flour, and used here as a thickener. An ounce of it is roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons.
- The costing"1s. 6d." is one shilling and sixpence. With cream at 1s. 6d. per pint, the half-pint used here comes to about 9d, roughly half the stated cost of the dish. Costings of this kind are a standard feature of the book and tell you more about Victorian dairy prices than about technique.
Bitter almonds were a standard flavouring in nineteenth-century English kitchens, used in ratafias, blancmanges, macaroons and custards wherever a sharper, headier almond note than sweet almonds could give was wanted. Their danger was known — Victorian toxicology texts discuss prussic acid poisoning from almond flavourings, and poisonings from concentrated essence of almonds are recorded in the period — but small-quantity domestic use persisted. The same base of milk, cream, yolks and a starch thickener carries lemon, bay, vanilla or, as here, almond, and the recipe's finish of chopped blanched almonds on top signals what is inside.