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Victoria Biscuits
Put three ounces of fresh butter into a bowl, and beat it to cream; add, gradually, half a pound of powdered white sugar, six ounces of dried flour, three ounces of pounded bitter almonds, and sugar which has been rubbed upon the rind of a lemon and powdered. Moisten the mixture with a small glassful of liqueur, butter some small tins, fill them with the batter, dredge flour upon them, and bake in a tolerably brisk oven till lightly browned. Spread upon them thinly a little orange marmalade, dip them in glaze, and put them on a strainer in a cool oven for a few minutes till it is set. The glaze may be prepared as follows. Boil together over a quick fire half a pound of refined sugar and a quarter of a pint of water. When bubbles appear on the surface of the syrup, dip the finger and thumb in cold water, and take a little of the sugar between them. Open them instantly, and when the thread between them is strong and thick, take the sugar from the fire, let it cool a few minutes, and stir into it, gradually but briskly, whatever liquid flavouring is to be used. The glaze is now ready for the biscuits.
The problem here is not technique but a single ingredient, present in a quantity that puts this outside what can be made today.
- Three ounces of bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding them into a batter does. Three ounces is roughly 85 g, on the order of sixty to eighty kernels, which is far beyond any quantity considered tolerable; sweet almonds contain only traces of the same compound, which is why they are harmless.
- Baking does not make it safeSome of the volatile cyanide is driven off by heat, but the loss is partial and unpredictable, and these are small, briefly baked biscuits finished in a cool oven. Many Victorian recipes call for only a few bitter almond kernels for flavour, though quantities vary widely from book to book; the proportion here reflects a period tolerance rather than a safe one.
- AvailabilityRaw bitter almonds are not legally sold for food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries, so the recipe cannot be followed as printed in any case. Bottled bitter almond flavouring sold today is a synthetic or de-cyanided product and is not what this recipe means.
- If you want the biscuitUse a current recipe for an almond biscuit with a boiled-sugar glaze rather than adapting this one.
- Reading the glaze instructionsThe finger-and-thumb test described is the old way of judging what a modern cook calls the thread stage, around 110-112C / 230-234F on a sugar thermometer. It is worth knowing as a piece of technique even though this particular batter should not be made.
- "Tolerably brisk oven"Victorian usage places a brisk oven at the hotter end of the range, but the recipe gives no temperature and any modern figure is only an approximation.
Bitter almonds were a standard flavouring in nineteenth-century English confectionery, valued for the intense marzipan note that sweet almonds cannot give, and Victorian cookery books call for them freely in ratafias, macaroons, blancmanges and biscuits of this kind. Their toxicity was understood — poisoning cases involving essence of bitter almonds appear in the medical and coroners' literature of the period — but domestic recipes rarely warned of it, and quantities varied wildly from book to book. The name of these biscuits, like the many other Victoria puddings, cakes and sandwiches in the same dictionary, is probably best read as loyal branding: publishers and cooks attached the Queen's name to fashionable small confections throughout her reign, and it seems generally to point to a dainty, glazed, tea-table item rather than any particular technique. The finishing here — marmalade spread thin, a boiled sugar glaze, then a few minutes in a cooling oven to set — is the standard confectioner's practice of the day, and may well have passed from the pastrycook's shop into the household kitchen.