No. 376

Mulled Egg and Almond Milk Thickened with Rice Flour

Lait de Poule et Lait d'Amandes, Lie a la Farine de riz

Break two very fresh eggs into a bowl, dilute them gradually with two gills of boiling water, adding some powdered sugar and a little orange flower-water; mix thoroughly and drink very hot.

Thickened Almond Milk.—A quarter of a pound of peeled fresh almonds and four bitter ones; pound them in a mortar, adding gradually half a pint of water, sugar, and one pint of milk. Press this well through a napkin, warm it up without boiling and thicken it with half an ounce of rice-flour diluted with half a pint of cold water; return it to the fire and remove at the first boil.

← No. 375 Mutton Broth Broths & Soups for Invalids No. 377 Beef Juice →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two invalid drinks printed as one entry: a hot egg posset and a thickened almond milk. Both belong to a sickroom tradition that modern food safety has closed off, and the almond milk contains an ingredient that is no longer sold as food in most countries.

Bitter almondsThe four bitter almonds are the reason this should not be made as written. Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — precisely what pounding in a mortar with water does. Estimates of a dangerous dose run to several dozen nuts for an adult but far fewer for a child or a weakened patient, which is exactly who this drink was intended for. Unprocessed bitter almonds are not legally sold as food in the United States and are restricted elsewhere.
The eggs are never cookedTwo gills of boiling water poured gradually into two raw eggs gives an uncontrolled temperature that cannot be relied on to kill Salmonella, and the drink is swallowed at once with no holding time. It was served to the sick. If you want an egg-based hot drink, use a current recipe built on pasteurised eggs or a measured custard temperature.
Gills and pintsFor reading the text: a gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. Ranhofer's pints are US pints of 16 fl oz. A quarter pound of peeled almonds is roughly a cup.
Rice flour as thickenerHalf an ounce of rice flour slaked in cold liquid and boiled once is a starch thickening, not a roux — it was chosen for invalids because it was thought lighter on the stomach than wheat flour. Modern rice flour behaves the same way, and prolonged boiling will thin it; the original says to remove it at the first boil.
Orange flower waterStill sold, and still potent; a teaspoon of a modern bottle goes a long way in a single cup.
Pressing through a napkinThe napkin is a straining cloth for extracting almond milk from the pounded paste. A doubled square of muslin or a nut-milk bag does the same job. Nothing about the technique itself is unsafe — it is the bitter almonds in the paste that are.

A Little History

Lait de poule — literally "hen's milk" — is the old French name for a hot beaten egg drink given to the sick and to children, a cousin of English egg posset and of eggnog without the spirits. It appears here in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, in a section of broths and thin nourishing drinks intended for invalids: mutton broth on one side, beef juice on the other. Almond milk had by then been a European sickroom staple for centuries, valued because it kept better than dairy in a warm room and was permitted on fast days; the addition of a few bitter almonds to a batch of sweet ones was the standard way of getting the marzipan-like flavour we now buy as almond extract, and cookbooks of the period call for them casually. The toxicity of bitter almonds was understood in Ranhofer's day, but the small quantities in confectionery and flavouring were treated as acceptable — a judgement that food regulators have since reversed.