No. 3365

Amarettes

Mix fifteen ounces of sweet almonds with one ounce of bitter almonds, a pound of sugar and four egg-whites, and crush to make a very fine paste; lay this in a vessel, add two more egg-whites and half a pound more sugar; stir well together until the paste is smooth. Mold it with the hands into olive shapes, and range them on a baking sheet covered with paper; leave to rest for four hours in the heater, then bake in a hot oven. After removing from the fire, and while yet hot, detach from the paper, gum over and roll them in finely chopped pistachios, then lay at once on a grate and return to the oven to dry the gum.

← No. 3364 Africans Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3366 Barcelonnettes →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is Ranhofer's version of the Italian amaretto, and the flavor depends on an ingredient that is no longer sold as food in the United States. The notes below explain the problem and decode the vocabulary; they are not a working conversion.

The bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which enzymes in the crushed nut convert to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernels are wet with egg white. An ounce of bitter almonds is on the order of twenty to thirty kernels, ground into a paste that is portioned into small cakes with no measured heat step to destroy the toxin. Raw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States for exactly this reason.
Baking is not a reliable fixBaking may not be a reliable fix -- Heat degrades amygdalin and drives off hydrogen cyanide, which is volatile, but how much is destroyed depends on kernel size, moisture and time, none of which this recipe specifies. The paste also rests four hours in a warm place before it ever reaches the oven. The bake should not be assumed to be a safety step.
Almond extract is not a substitute for the risk, only the flavorThe bitter-almond note in modern amaretti comes from benzaldehyde, sold as almond extract, which carries the aroma without the cyanogenic glycoside. If you want these cookies, use a current amaretti recipe written around extract or apricot-kernel flavoring rather than adapting this one.
"The heater"The recipe's term for a warm cupboard or a warm shelf near the range, used to dry the surface of molded pastes before they go into the oven. It is not a proving box and not an oven setting.
"Gum over"Gum arabic dissolved in water, brushed on hot cakes as an adhesive and glaze. The pistachios stick to it and the brief return to the oven sets it glassy. Modern pastry work uses a thin sugar syrup or piping gel for the same job.
ScaleA pound of almonds (fifteen ounces sweet, one bitter), a pound and a half of sugar and six egg whites is a professional batch that would yield several dozen small cakes for a petits fours tray.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of a professional career of some thirty-four years, most of it as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its petits fours chapter is essentially a French pastry repertoire with Italian borrowings; amarettes is Ranhofer's spelling of the Italian amaretti, from amaro, bitter, after the bitter almonds that gave the cookies their name and their perfume. Pairing a large quantity of sweet almonds with a small proportion of bitter ones was common in European confectionery into the twentieth century, and appears in period manuals for macaroons, ratafias, orgeat and marzipan. Cyanogenic compounds in bitter almonds were understood by chemists at the time. Commercial confectionery later shifted to synthetic benzaldehyde as it became cheap and consistent, which is why the flavor survives on supermarket shelves while the ingredient itself does not.