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Ratafias
Small biscuits so called because made with almonds, taking their name from the liquor. They are very nice for garnishes and are made as follows: Blanch and pound in a mortar one-half pound each of bitter and sweet almonds, adding gradually the whites of seven eggs. When the almonds are pounded fine sift two pounds of powdered sugar into the mortar and work it well with the pestle. It is very important that the sugar should be thoroughly incorporated with the other ingredients. Wash a bladder very clean, cut a small hole at one end of it and fasten by binding a glass tube the size of a quill into it; or use a biscuit bag. Put into the bladder or bag the ratafia paste, press it gently through the tube and let it drop onto an egg wafer paper, dropping in the biscuits so that they do not touch each other. Bake them on tin baking-sheets in a hot oven. Separate, trim off the egg paper with scissors and set in a screen to dry.
This is a period almond macaroon, and the problem with it is the first ingredient. Half a pound of bitter almonds is far outside any range that could be eaten safely, and the sale of raw bitter almonds is restricted in the United States and much of Europe for exactly this reason.
- Bitter almonds and cyanideBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding in a mortar with egg white does. Estimates of a lethal dose for an adult run to a few dozen nuts, and a great many fewer for a child; half a pound is on the order of two hundred. Baking drives off some of the hydrogen cyanide but does not make the quantity here defensible.
- Why the old books used them anywayBitter almonds were the standard source of almond flavour before synthetic benzaldehyde was cheap, and a professional kitchen used them as a strong aromatic in small amounts. Oscar's proportion — equal weights bitter and sweet — reflects a confectioner's habit of treating them as an ordinary ingredient. That habit did not survive twentieth-century food regulation. Use a current macaroon recipe instead.
- Egg wafer paperNot a safety issue, but worth knowing: this is edible rice or wafer paper, the same material still sold for nougat and torrone. The biscuits are piped onto it, baked, then cut apart with the paper still attached to the base.
- The bladderA cleaned animal bladder with a quill or glass tube bound into the neck was in use as a piping bag in the nineteenth century. Oscar's aside — "or use a biscuit bag" — shows the cloth bag was available as an alternative.
- "A hot oven"Period oven terms were not standardised, but 'hot' is usually glossed at somewhere around 400°F. Biscuits of this kind are baked briefly and then dried rather than coloured — which is what the final drying step in the recipe is for.
- The screenThe biscuits are set in a screen to finish drying in air rather than in the oven, which helps them set crisp.
Ratafia was originally a drink: a sweetened cordial made by steeping fruit stones, kernels or almonds in spirit, its name generally traced through French from a Caribbean or Malay root, though the etymology has never been settled. Because the cordial got its characteristic flavour from bitter almond and stone kernels, any small almond biscuit carrying the same flavour came to be called a ratafia too he transtransfer explicit. In English and American kitchens of the nineteenth century the ratafia biscuit was a workhorse rather than a treat: crushed for trifle bases, set around the rim of a charlotte, used as the garnish Oscar describes.