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Almond Milk
4 ounces of sweet almonds 6 bitter almonds Orange-flower water 1 quart of water Blanch the almonds, and grind them in a nut mill. Pound them in a mortar a little at a time, adding occasionally a drop of orange-flower water, to prevent oiling. When they are well pounded, return them to the mortar, and pour the cold water over them, mixing well. Place a cloth over the mortar, put a plate over that, and let them stand four hours. Strain and bottle for use.
This is a straightforward cold infusion of ground almonds, but the six bitter almonds in the ingredient list put it outside what can responsibly be made today.
- The bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzymes convert to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernel is crushed and wetted — exactly what this method does, then leaves to stand for four hours. The cyanide is water-soluble, so it ends up in the strained milk rather than being left behind in the meal.
- Quantity is not a safeguardSix kernels is a small proportion of a quart, but the yield here is a drinking beverage with no dilution step afterwards, and the amygdalin content of raw bitter almonds varies widely between batches. There is no way to judge the dose from the recipe, and children are the group historically most at risk.
- They are not sold for eatingRaw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold as food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. Anything labelled bitter almond on a modern shelf is almond extract or flavouring, in which the cyanogenic compounds have been removed or were never present.
- No cooking step intervenesCommercial bitter almond flavourings are made safe by industrial processing — distillation and washing that strip out the cyanide — not by anything done in a domestic kitchen. Apart from the brief hot-water blanch to loosen the skins, this preparation is cold throughout: pound, steep four hours, strain. Nothing in it reduces the hazard.
- If you want almond milkUse a current recipe built on sweet almonds alone. Do not attempt to substitute your way through this one.
- Terms in the originalOrange-flower water is a distillate of bitter orange blossom, still sold for baking; here it is added drop by drop only to keep the pounded almonds from separating into oil. "Blanch" means to slip the skins after a brief soak in hot water, and a nut mill is a hand-cranked grinder — a food processor does the same work.
Almond milk is one of the oldest non-dairy liquids in the European kitchen, ubiquitous in medieval and early modern cookery because it kept better than milk without refrigeration and, crucially, was permitted on fast days when dairy was not. Vegetarian and Lenten cooking inherited the same set of substitutions. The pairing of sweet almonds with a few bitter ones appears often in printed recipes — the bitter kernels supply the intense marzipan note many people associate with "almond flavour," since sweet almonds on their own are usually described as mild. Amygdalin was isolated from bitter almonds in the 1830s and the cyanide risk was understood well before this book was printed, but bitter almonds remained an ordinary grocery item into the twentieth century, and older recipes call for them without comment.