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Almond Milk
When almonds, either bitter or sweet, are pounded together, and water added the liquor resulting is of a milky appearance, and is commonly known as "almond milk." Mix four ounces of almonds to every pint of water, straining over half a pound of fine sugar, boil up once, and put in bottles for future use. This preparation will keep good for a week.
The problem here is the first clause. Oscar offers bitter almonds and sweet almonds as interchangeable, and they are not: bitter almonds are a source of cyanide, and the quantity called for is far outside any safe range.
- Bitter almonds are the hazardBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding with water does. Four ounces of bitter almonds per pint, drunk as a beverage, is a poisoning dose, not a flavouring. Raw bitter almonds are not legally sold at retail in the United States, and European rules impose limits on hydrocyanic acid in foods.
- Boiling does not make it safeThe single brief boil in the recipe cannot be relied on to drive off the hydrocyanic acid. Commercial bitter almond oil is rendered safe by an industrial process that removes it; nothing in a kitchen pot reliably accomplishes the same thing.
- Keeping qualityA sugared nut emulsion held a week is a fermentation and spoilage risk; the text gives no storage conditions, and the week should not be taken as a reliable shelf life.
- If you want almond milkUse a current recipe built on sweet almonds only. Almond extract sold today is either synthetic benzaldehyde or a processed bitter-almond oil with the cyanide removed, and is safe in the small quantities recipes call for.
- Units, for reading the textA pint here is 16 fl oz, and "fine sugar" most likely means finely granulated rather than confectioners'. Half a pound of sugar to a pint of liquid makes this a syrup, closer to orgeat than to a drinking milk.
Almond milk is one of the oldest non-dairy liquids in the European kitchen: medieval cooks leaned on it heavily during Lent and on fast days, when dairy was forbidden but a white, rich-bodied liquid was still wanted for pottages, sauces and blancmange. The bitter-almond version is often said to have survived into the nineteenth century largely as a flavouring for confectionery and for orgeat, the sweetened almond syrup that turns up in barrooms and soda fountains. That Oscar treats bitter and sweet almonds as a matter of preference reflects a period in which the toxicity of amygdalin was known to chemists while its treatment in food law was uneven and varied by jurisdiction.