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Apricot Water Ice
Stew for a few minutes some well-chopped apricots and the peeled kernels of half that quantity in a little sugar and water. Rub the fruit with the back of a spoon through a strainer into the freezer and mix in the syrup. Freeze, and when it is nearly set, whip the whites of two or three eggs to a froth, mix them in and turn the freezer rapidly a short time longer. Cut up a few very ripe apricots and stir them into the ice before serving. Canned apricots may be used if fresh ones are not available, and if preserved in syrup that will answer for mixing with them, or the liquor can be made into a syrup by boiling it with a proper proportion of sugar.
This one cannot be made as printed. The problem is not the freezing method or the egg whites but the kernels, which are called for in quantity.
- The kernels are the hinge, and they are toxicApricot kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed, chewed or wetted. The recipe asks for the peeled kernels of half the quantity of apricots used, far more than the single kernels used where kernels are called for at all.
- Stewing does not remove itA few minutes of simmering in sugar syrup neither destroys amygdalin reliably nor drives off the cyanide already formed. Several national food safety bodies now advise against eating raw apricot kernels in any amount, and some countries restrict their sale.
- Why it was here at allThe kernel supplied the bitter-almond flavour, the same reason old recipes call for bitter almonds, noyau or ratafia. That flavour compound and the toxin come from the same chemistry, which is why domestic use of stone kernels has largely fallen away.
- The raw egg whites are a second, smaller problemTwo or three whites are whipped and folded into a nearly frozen ice and never heated. Freezing does not kill Salmonella; a modern version would use pasteurised whites or a cooked Italian meringue.
- If you want the dishUse a current apricot sorbet recipe. Anything that gets the bitter-almond note should get it from a measured extract, not from stone kernels.
Oscar Tschirky's book is generally taken to reflect the Waldorf's ice and sorbet service at a moment when a hotel kitchen still froze everything by hand in what was typically a pail-and-crank freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which is why the instructions talk about turning the freezer rather than churning a machine. The trick of drawing an almond perfume from fruit kernels is far older than the Waldorf and runs through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European confectionery, where peach, apricot and cherry kernels, bitter almonds and the liqueur noyau all supplied the same flavour to creams and ices. Nineteenth-century writers were not wholly ignorant of the danger, though the toxin was not well understood. The folded-in egg whites at the end give a preparation lightened to a froth rather than left as a dense fruit ice, and the note about canned apricots is a reminder of how seasonal a fresh apricot still was in 1896.