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Devilled Almonds
2 ozs. blanched and shredded almonds 2 tablespoons chopped pickies 1 tablespoon Worcestershire
This entry survives as an ingredient list only ot present on the page othing tells you what to do with the three items. What follows is what a cook needs to know to read it, plus a note on where the gaps are.
- "Pickies" is a misprint"Pickies" is likely a misprint -- most probably pickles, chopped small, though the reading cannot be confirmed from the page. The line gives no dish name or method, so any guess at what the word was meant to be is inference.
- The method is missingNo fat, no heat, no timing is given. A cook wanting to make this would have to supply all of it: some fat to brown the almonds in, and the seasonings stirred in afterwards. Treat any reconstruction as inference, not as this book's instruction.
- 2 ounces of almondsRoughly half a cup once blanched and shredded, depending on how fine the shreds are. A small quantity by any reading.
- Blanched and shreddedBlanched means skinned: pour boiling water over whole almonds, let stand a minute, and the skins slip off. Shredded here means sliced lengthwise into slivers, not grated.
- The chafing-dish blazerIf a chafing dish were used, the blazer is the upper pan, set directly over the spirit lamp, and the hot-water pan beneath it is for holding and for anything that scorches. The entry itself specifies no vessel and no heat source.
- Worcestershire and saltA tablespoon of Worcestershire over half a cup of nuts is assertive and already salty. Taste before adding any further salt, and add the sauce off the heat so it does not simply evaporate.
- ServingDevilled and spiced nuts were generally passed hot, at the end of dinner or with drinks. The entry gives no serving directions.
Chafing-dish cookery was a genuine craze in American cities in the 1890s and 1900s: dishes a hostess could assemble at the table over a spirit lamp, without servants and without a kitchen. "Devilled" is the older English kitchen term for anything made hot with mustard, cayenne, or a peppery bottled sauce, and Worcestershire, widely sold in America, was the standard shortcut to that flavour. Salted and spiced almonds belong to the same fashion for the savoury, the small piquant course that late-Victorian and Edwardian tables borrowed from English dining to close a meal in place of, or after, something sweet. That this particular entry reaches us as three ingredients and no method suggests it was set down on the assumption that a reader already knew what to do with a blazer and a handful of nuts.