Noyeau, Home-made
INGREDIENTS.-2 oz. of bitter almonds, 1 oz. of sweet ditto, 1 lb. of loaf sugar, the rinds of 3 lemons, 1 quart of Irish whiskey or gin, 1 tablespoonful of clarified honey, 1/2 pint of milk.
Blanch and pound the almonds, and mix with them the sugar, which should also be pounded. Boil the milk, let it stand till quite cold; then mix all the ingredients together, and let them remain for 10 days, shaking them every day. Filter the mixture through blottingpaper, bottle off for use in small bottles, and seal the NOYE AU corks down. This will be found useful for flavouring many sweet dishes.
A tablespoonful of the above noyeau added to a pint of boiled custard instead of NOYEAU. brandy, as given in our recipe for custard, makes an exceedingly agreeable and delicate flavour.
SEASONABLE.-May be made at any time. "Oh, those melons! If he's able We're to have a feast so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice."-BROWNING:
OATMEAL.
This is a domestic imitation of noyau, the almond-kernel cordial, and it turns on an ingredient that is no longer sold for eating in most countries. The points below explain the hazard and decode the archaic parts of the text; they are not a route to making it.
- Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the enzyme emulsin converts to hydrogen cyanide once the kernel is crushed and wetted. Two ounces of them, pounded and steeped cold for ten days, is a deliberate cyanide extraction, and nothing in the method destroys the toxin. Bitter almonds are for this reason restricted or unavailable for retail food sale in the UK, the US and the EU.
- The quantity is not trivialTwo ounces is roughly fifty to sixty kernels. Toxicity figures for raw bitter almonds vary with variety and moisture, but published estimates put a lethal adult dose in the region of a few dozen kernels, and far fewer for a child. Dividing the batch across a quart of spirit spreads the dose without removing it, and the recipe then invites you to stir a tablespoonful into custard.
- Filtering does nothingStraining through blotting paper removes almond solids only. Hydrogen cyanide and benzaldehyde are both soluble and pass straight into the bottled cordial, which is why the result tastes so strongly of almond in the first place.
- Use a commercial flavouring insteadFor the same effect in custards and creams, a current recipe using bottled almond extract, orgeat, or a commercially produced crème de noyaux gives the flavour without the kernel chemistry. The almond note in modern extract is benzaldehyde, produced synthetically or from cassia, precisely so that the toxic precursor is not involved.
- Reading the rest of the text"Loaf sugar" is refined sugar broken from a cone, equivalent to ordinary granulated. A quart here is the imperial quart, 40 fl oz rather than 32. "Clarified honey" simply means honey warmed and skimmed of scum. The stray lines about melons and Browning are printing debris from the facing entries, not part of the recipe.
History: Noyau (French noyau, a fruit stone or kernel) was a sweetened kernel-flavoured cordial known in England from the eighteenth century; Noyau de Poissy, made near Paris, and a Martinique version are among the kinds most often named in English sources. The characteristic flavour came from the kernels inside apricot, peach or cherry stones, or from bitter almonds, all of which contain the same amygdalin that produces both the marzipan aroma and the cyanide. Bitter almonds were an ordinary article of grocery in this period, and ratafia and noyau recipes appear throughout the period's cookery books; Mrs Beeton's own text recommends this one casually as a flavouring for custard. Tighter regulation came later, as the chemistry became better understood and as synthetic benzaldehyde made the risk unnecessary. The entry is a fair snapshot of a kitchen that still made its own flavouring essences.