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Macaroons with Almonds
Blanch and pound smooth one-half pound of sweet and one-fourth pound of bitter almonds, adding a very little of the white of an egg to prevent their oiling. If they are then allowed to stand all night they will do so much the better. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, adding gradually and in very small quantities three heaping tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar; continue beating well, and stir in gradually one teaspoonful of mixed mace, nutmeg and cinnamon finely powdered, and one teaspoonful of rose water; then add also, by degrees, the pounded almonds. The mixture should be of the consistency of soft dough--if too thick it will be heavy, and if too thin the cakes will run out of shape in baking; if it is not too thick, pound a few more almonds and stir them in. Butter a tin baking-sheet, flour the hands, take the dough up with a knife and work into balls; lay on a battered tin, bake to a pale brown. Have the oven hotter at the top than at the bottom. The macaroon should, in baking, rise in the middle, and the surface should crack. Split almonds laid on top before baking will improve the effect.
This is a bitter-almond macaroon, and the bitter almonds are the problem. The quantity called for is far outside any range that could be eaten safely today.
- Bitter almonds contain cyanideBitter almonds carry amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding with egg white and standing overnight accomplishes. The compound is not destroyed reliably by the brief, gentle bake described here.
- The quantity is the issueA quarter pound is roughly 110 grams of bitter almonds, on the order of a hundred kernels, divided among a batch of small cakes. Published toxic doses for adults are measured in tens of kernels, and far fewer for a child. This is not a trace flavouring.
- Standing overnight makes it worseStanding overnight: the instruction to let the pounded paste rest all night improves the texture, and it also gives the enzyme in the crushed nut time to act on the amygdalin — though some of the hydrogen cyanide released would escape as the paste stands, so the net effect is uncertain rather than clearly worse.
- You cannot buy them anywayUnprocessed bitter almonds are not sold for eating in the United States and are restricted in a number of other countries. What is sold as bitter almond extract is a different product — either synthetic benzaldehyde or an almond oil from which the prussic acid has been removed — and is not a substitute in this proportion.
- The rest of the method is sound but irrelevant herePale brown, cracked-topped, risen in the middle with the oven hotter above than below — that is a correct description of a good macaroon. It does not make the batch edible. Use a current sweet-almond macaroon recipe instead.
Bitter almonds were a standard confectioner's ingredient through the nineteenth century, valued for the intense marzipan note that sweet almonds alone cannot give; ratafias and noyau depend on them, and amaretti are traditionally made with bitter almonds or apricot kernels. Nineteenth-century cookbooks call for them freely. The danger was known — poisoning cases appear in nineteenth-century medical literature, and the volatile oil was a recognised toxin — but the risk was treated as a matter of dose and judgment rather than prohibition. Oscar Tschirky's book, compiled around the turn of the century from the Waldorf's kitchens and from receipts then in circulation, reflects that older assumption. The mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and rose water place it in an earlier tradition of spiced almond confectionery, nearer to marchpane than to the plain almond macaroon that later displaced it.