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Almond Pastry
4 ounces sweet almonds 2 bitter almonds 4 ounces flour Whites of 3 eggs 1/4 teaspoon baking powder 4 ounces sugar Blanch the almonds, and put them through a nut mill; then pound them well in a mortar, a little at a time, adding occasionally one drop of water to keep them from oiling. When they are well pounded, return the whole to the mortar, and add gradually the flour, which must be sifted, and the sugar. Stir in the whites of eggs, beaten to a stiff froth. Drop one tablespoon for each cake on a cake tin, and bake immediately in a moderate oven for about ten minutes. The should be kept in a closed tin in a dry place.
The method is sound old confectionery practice, but the ingredient list includes bitter almonds, which is why this one belongs on the page rather than in the oven.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding with drops of water in a mortar does. Unprocessed bitter almonds are not sold at retail in the United States, and ten minutes in a moderate oven is not a reliable way to drive off the volatile product. Use a current almond-cake recipe instead.
- Why two were called forThe two bitter almonds are not for bulk but for perfume: they carry the benzaldehyde note that reads as "almond" to the palate, while the four ounces of sweet almonds supply the body.
- "Moderate oven"In books of this period a moderate oven is usually reckoned at roughly 350-375F. Small drop cakes of this size would plausibly take about the ten minutes stated at that heat.
- Ounces are weightAll three weight measures — almonds, flour, sugar — are avoirdupois ounces, not fluid. Four ounces of flour is a scant cup; four ounces of sugar a little over half a cup.
- Nut mill and mortarThe nut mill grates the blanched almonds coarsely; the mortar then works them to a paste. The drops of water exist to stop the almonds releasing their oil and turning to butter, a problem a food processor causes even faster.
- YieldA tablespoon per cake from this quantity gives roughly two dozen small cakes.
- StorageThe closed tin in a dry place is meant literally — a meringue-bound almond cake draws damp and goes leathery within a day in a humid kitchen.
Almond drop cakes of this kind sit in a long European line of ground-almond confectionery running back through marzipan and the macaroon, all of them ways of building a cake without much butter or, in this case, without egg yolks. Recipes pairing a larger weight of sweet almonds with a very few bitter ones were common in nineteenth-century English and American cookery; the trade in bitter almonds was later restricted as the chemistry became better documented.