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Italian Sandwiches
Beat up the yolk of an egg with nearly a quarter of a pint of cold water, and make with it into a stiff paste a quarter of a pound of flour, into which 2 ounces of good butter have been rubbed, 1 1/2 ounces of sifted sugar, and a little cinnamon. Put this paste on a board and roll it out very thin (it should not be quite a quarter of an inch thick), divide it into strips an inch in width, and from 3 to 4 inches in length. These strips must be first hardened. Put them in a cool, well-ventilated place. In the meantime prepare the following mixture: Beat the whites of 3 eggs to a froth, with 2 ounces of powdered loaf sugar. Blanch and pound 2 ounces of sweet and 12 bitter almonds, mix them with the egg-froth until it is a soft, smooth paste, when spread half the strips of paste with the mixture, and cover with the other half. Bake a pale brown. Time, eighteen minutes to bake.
This is a sweet almond-paste biscuit rather than a sandwich in the savoury sense, but it cannot be made as printed: the filling is built on twelve bitter almonds.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted, which is what pounding them into a wet egg froth does. Twelve is a substantial quantity for one batch, and although baking drives off some of the volatile cyanide, the filling is enclosed and only briefly cooked. This is well beyond a trace flavouring, and enough to treat as a genuine hazard.
- Why the book could call for themThey were sold openly as a flavouring in the period, and the 2 oz sweet to 12 bitter ratio here is a flavour ratio, not a safety one. Retail sale of unprocessed bitter almonds for eating is now restricted or controlled in a number of countries, and they are not a supermarket ingredient.
- Not fixed by substitution adviceA modern almond-filling recipe should be used instead. We are not offering a rewritten filling here, because the rest of the method assumes an ingredient no reader should be sourcing.
- On the quantities, for referenceA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz in the imperial measure this book uses, a little under two thirds of a cup. "Powdered loaf sugar" is loaf sugar crushed fine — icing or caster sugar in current terms.
- "Bake a pale brown"The recipe gives no oven setting and no oven term; it is judged entirely by colour, and these are meant to stay blond rather than take any real browning.
- The hardening stepThe recipe says the rolled strips must be hardened first in a cool, airy place before filling, though it does not say why; drying them presumably makes the thin strips easier to handle and pair up.