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Almond Creams
Blanch and pound 5 ounces of sweet and 1 ounce of bitter almonds to a paste; put to this loaf sugar to taste, rubbed with lemon rind and pounded. Rub smoothly a dessertspoonful of corn flour into a quart of milk, or, if it is to be had, use a pint and a half of cream; add the yolks of 3 eggs well beaten. Put the whole, when well mixed, into a saucepan; set it on the fire and stir constantly until it thickens; but on no account allow it to boil. The whites of the eggs may be whisked, and a little placed on the top of each glass. Time, about ten minutes to boil the cream.
This is a stirred custard flavoured with pounded almonds, and it belongs to a period when bitter almonds were a standard flavouring on the grocer's shelf. That single ingredient is the reason the recipe cannot be followed today.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste and stirring into warm milk accomplishes. A full ounce, uncooked and undistilled, is well outside any tolerable range, and the custard is deliberately never brought to a boil. Unprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries.
- Raw egg whiteThe whisked whites are spooned on top of each glass without cooking, so nothing in that topping is ever brought to a safe temperature. Unremarkable when the book was written; it is not a risk worth taking now.
- If you want the dishAn almond-flavoured stirred custard is worth making, but use a current recipe with a modern flavouring rather than adapting this one.
- Corn flourIn this book corn flour is the British term for cornstarch, not cornmeal and not maize flour. A dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons — a very light thickening for a quart of liquid, which is why the eggs do most of the work.
- Sugar rubbed with lemon rindRubbing a lump of loaf sugar over a lemon until it turns yellow was a standard way of taking the oil from the zest. Loaf sugar was cut from a cone of refined sugar and is simply granulated sugar in modern terms.
- The contradictory timingThe instruction warns against boiling and then closes with "about ten minutes to boil the cream." The second phrase is loose period usage for bringing the custard up to heat; a custard thickened over direct heat curdles the moment it actually boils.
Sweet and bitter almonds were sold side by side through the nineteenth century, the bitter kind used in small proportion as a flavouring — the source of the almond note in ratafia biscuits, macaroons and the almond waters and essences that filled confectioners' shelves. The characteristic scent comes from benzaldehyde, which is released along with hydrogen cyanide when the crushed kernel meets moisture. Recipes of the period commonly set the bitter almonds in a small proportion to the sweet, as here, five or six to one. Synthetic benzaldehyde and heat-treated almond extracts later displaced the raw kernel. The dish itself is a blancmange-adjacent creation, part of the long family of almond-and-cream sweets that runs from medieval almond milk through to the set creams and custards of household compendia like this one.