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Almond and Bread Pudding
3 ounces of sweet almonds 6 bitter almonds 4 ounces of bread crumbs 2 ounces butter The grated rind and juice of 1 lemon 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 pint milk Blanch the almonds, and put them through a nut mill. Pound them well, adding a little water occasionally to prevent oiling. Add to the milk, and let them simmer on the stove for a quarter of an hour; then pour over the bread crumbs, and add the sugar, flour and lemon.
This pudding cannot be made as printed, because one of its eight ingredients is no longer sold as food in most countries and should not be eaten raw in any quantity.
- The bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds (the kernels of Prunus dulcis var. amara) contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzyme emulsin converts to hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding with water and steeping in milk accomplishes. Raw bitter almonds typically yield several milligrams of cyanide each, and the margin between a flavouring dose and a harmful one is narrow, especially for a child eating a sweet pudding.
- Simmering does not make them safeA quarter of an hour in milk is not a detoxification step. Commercial bitter almond oil is rendered safe by water distillation and subsequent removal of hydrogen cyanide under controlled conditions; a domestic saucepan does neither reliably, and the pounded nut solids stay in the pudding.
- They are also not obtainableRaw bitter almonds are not sold for food use in the United States and their sale is restricted in the UK and EU. Any modern packet labelled "bitter almond" is most likely a flavouring extract rather than the nut, and cannot be substituted by weight here.
- Not a matter of scaling downReducing the six kernels to one or two does not convert this into a sound recipe — the hazard is a variable natural toxin in an ingredient no longer sold for eating. If you want an almond bread pudding, use a current recipe built on sweet almonds and almond extract.
- The instructions stop early in any caseAs printed the method never mentions the butter, nor any baking or steaming — it ends with the lemon. Even setting the almonds aside, the page is a fragment rather than a workable set of directions.
Bitter almonds were a common flavouring in British and American kitchens through much of the nineteenth century, valued for the intense marzipan note that a few kernels lend to custards, ratafias, macaroons and puddings like this one; recipe books of the period often specified them alongside sweet almonds in small proportions. Understanding of the amygdalin–cyanide reaction grew through the century, and food authorities later moved to restrict the raw kernel while permitting properly processed bitter almond oil and essence.