No. 3381

Bitter Macaroons

Macarons Amers

Pound twelve ounces of sweet and four ounces of bitter almonds with two pounds of sugar and ten to twelve egg-whites; make a paste not too fine but rather soft; work this well to have it attain body, then lay it through a pocket into small oval macaroons an inch and a half long on a paper-covered baking sheet; dampen with a wet cloth and bestrew with granulated sugar; cook in a slack oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a nineteenth-century almond macaroon built on a quantity of bitter almonds that no modern kitchen should attempt. The notes below explain the hazard and the vocabulary rather than offering a conversion.

Bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and moistened — exactly what pounding them into a wet paste does. Four ounces is on the order of a hundred kernels, far past any margin of safety for a batch of small cakes that may be eaten a dozen at a time.
Baking does not fix itA slack oven is a low one, conventionally reckoned at about 300°F or below. Low heat cannot be relied on to drive off the cyanide already generated in the paste, and the recipe offers no blanching, soaking or scalding step that might reduce it.
They are not sold this way nowRaw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. Anything labelled bitter almond on a modern shelf is almost certainly an extract or a flavouring, not the kernel Ranhofer meant.
Extract is not a substitute at this ratioBitter almond extract carries the flavour compound benzaldehyde without the glycoside, but it is a liquid flavouring measured in drops. There is no honest arithmetic that turns four ounces of pounded kernels into a spoonful of extract in a recipe whose almonds are also its bulk and structure. Use a current macaroon recipe instead.
What the other terms mean"Lay it through a pocket" is piping through a pastry bag. "Bestrew" is simply to scatter. The damp cloth over the piped shapes helps the granulated sugar adhere.
ScaleTwo pounds of sugar, a pound of almonds and a dozen whites is a professional batch — well over a hundred macaroons an inch and a half long. Ranhofer was writing for a large restaurant kitchen, not a household.

A Little History

Bitter almonds were a standard confectioner's ingredient across Europe for centuries, valued because the benzaldehyde in them gives the intense marzipan-and-cherry note that sweet almonds lack; the same compound is what makes commercial almond extract taste more like almonds than almonds do. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and his petits fours chapter runs through a series of macaroon variations em angurangelica, chocolate, pistachio em each a small change rung on the same almond-sugar-white base. The danger of bitter almonds was known in his day, but the toxicity was understood as a matter of caution rather than a matter of regulation. Restrictions on their sale came later, which is why a formula that reads as ordinary in 1894 reads as unmakeable now.