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Almond Chocolate Drops
Put a metal mortar in a hot oven till it is well heated; throw into it a quarter of a pound of cake chocolate broken into small pieces; pound it to a paste, then mix with it a quarter of a pound of finely sifted sugar. Blanch, slice, and dry in a cool oven 2 ounces of sweet almonds; roll each slice smoothly in a little of the chocolate paste, and put them upon sheets of writing paper till they are cold. Time to prepare, about one hour.
An early confectioner's method for coating almond slices in chocolate, worked by hand in a warmed mortar rather than over a water bath. The whole thing hinges on keeping the chocolate warm enough to stay plastic without ever getting hot enough to seize or scorch.
- The heated mortar is the melting vesselThe heavy metal mortar carries enough stored warmth to soften the chocolate as you pound it. The recipe calls for a "hot oven," but for a modern adaptation a much gentler warming (a low oven for a few minutes) is safer; an over-hot mortar risks overheating the chocolate.
- Cake chocolateNineteenth-century "cake chocolate" was chocolate sold in solid blocks or cakes; its sugar content varied, and some was little sweetened, which may be why a quarter pound of sugar is added here. With modern eating chocolate at 55-70 per cent, reduce or omit the added sugar.
- Sifted sugar"Finely sifted sugar" is close to what we would call caster or superfine sugar, sifted to break lumps. Coarser granulated sugar will give a grittier coating, as nothing dissolves in a paste with no water in it.
- Sweet almondsThe distinction from bitter almonds mattered in period cookbooks and it still does. Use ordinary supermarket almonds; blanch in boiling water for a minute, slip the skins, then slice lengthways while still soft.
- A cool oven for dryingAbout 200-225F, or the lowest setting on most ovens, with the door propped. The almond slices should be dry to the touch and barely coloured, not toasted.
- Writing paperParchment or a silicone mat. Period writing paper was hard-sized enough to release the cooled drops; uncoated modern paper is less reliable.
- TemperingChocolate worked this way is not tempered, so the drops will set soft and are liable to bloom grey. Keep them cool and eat them fresh.
- YieldNot stated. Two ounces of almonds is roughly 40-50 whole nuts, each cut into several slices, so the count depends entirely on how thinly you slice and how thickly you coat.
Almond confectionery is older than chocolate confectionery, and this recipe sits at the point where the two met in the domestic kitchen. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries chocolate reached households as a solid cake, most often intended to be scraped or pounded for drinking, and pounding it in a mortar was a common first step. Household confectioners had no reliable way to temper chocolate, so a recipe like this one relies on residual heat in a heavy vessel and on rolling small pieces by hand. Setting the finished drops on sheets of writing paper reflects a kitchen without purpose-made non-stick papers.