Historical Culinary Recipe
Reconstruction:
Two and a Half Recipes for
Almond Milk
Elizabeth Branscum & Julia Tomasson
11 May 2021
The Recipe
“ALMOND MILK. Parboil and peel your almonds, then put in cold water,
then grind and soak in water in which onions have been cooked and
strain through a sieve: then fry the onions, and add a little salt, and boil
on the fire, then add the sops. And if you make almond milk for sick
people, do not add onions, and in place of the onion water to soak the
almonds as spoken of above, add and soak them in clean warm water
and boil it, and do not add salt, but lots of sugar. And if you want to make
it as a drink, strain through a sieve or through two pieces of cloth, and
lots of sugar to drink it.”
Source: Le Menagier de Paris
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html#BEVERAGES%20FOR
%20INVALIDS
ALMOND MILK. [Version 1] Parboil and peel your almonds, then put in
cold water, then grind and soak in water in which onions have been
cooked [???] and strain through a sieve [?]: then fry the onions, and add a
little salt, and boil on the fire[?], then add the sops. [Version 2] And if you
make almond milk for sick people, do not add onions, and in place of the
onion water to soak the almonds as spoken of above, add and soak them
in clean warm water and boil it, and do not add salt, but lots of sugar.
[Version 2.5] And if you want to make it as a drink, strain through a sieve
or through two pieces of cloth, and lots of sugar to drink it.
“ALMOND MILK.” (see modifications throughout if making for sick people)
1. “Parboil [almonds]” [time unspecified, likely significant; mass of almonds unspecified, likely
significant]
2. “and peel your almonds,” [technique unspecified, likely insignificant]
3. “then put in cold water” [temperature unspecified, likely insignificant; volume unspecified, likely
insignificant],
4. “then grind” [technique unspecified, likely insignificant; consistency unspecified, likely significant]
5. [while grinding, “cook” onions in water][entire step unspecified, likely significant] [skip this step if
making for sick people]
6. “and soak in water in which onions have been cooked” [time unspecified, likely insignificant; volume
of water unspecified, likely significant. see step 5 ] [if making for sick people, soak in “clean warm
water”]
7. “and strain through a sieve:” [product unspecified, likely significant]
8. “then fry the onions,” [technique unspecified, likely insignificant] [omit if making for sick people]
9. “and add a little salt,” [amount unspecified, likely insignificant] [if making for sick people add “lots of
sugar” {amount unspecified, likely significant} instead of salt]
10. “and boil on the fire,” [product unspecified, likely significant; time unspecified, likely significant]
11. “then add the sops.” [mass unspecified, likely significant; technique unspecified, likely insignificant;
product unspecified, likely significant]
Almond milk as drink
1. Follow steps 1-10 making the above modifications for sick people Note: add more sugar in step 9
and omit step 11 entirely.
Boiling Onion, Take 1
Accidentally poured out
water with onion:
“water in which onions
have been cooked” is
not a common
ingredient in modern
cookery
Grinding Attempts: Mortar and Pestle
Grinding Attempts: Mortar and Pestle
Using the mortar and pestle was much harder
than we anticipated - the almonds were
rubbery and slippery and just didn’t want to
stay put to be crushed. We were really excited
about using this technique so we gave it our all
before giving up.
Grinding Attempts: Glass Mixing Bowl
We tried a number of different
techniques with the bowl -
ultimately, moving it around in
circles like this seemed to prove
the most effective, though as we
wrote in our field notes, “It is hard
to describe (through words) the
amount and pattern of pressure
that is most effective.”
Grinding Attempts: Wine Bottle Rolling Pin
Julia displaying the
results of her wine bottle
rolling pin method - as
you can see from the
cutting board, all of these
methods only really
worked on a small
number of almonds at a
time.
More Grinding: Back to Basics
Ultimately we resorted back to crushing with the
glass bowl. This could only crush a few almonds
at a time but seemed to work best - especially
rolling the bottom rim of the bowl over the
almonds in a circular motion. We ask ourselves
again what an early modern person would have
done to grind their almonds and wonder: 1)
perhaps we should have boiled the almonds for
longer; 2) perhaps early modern people were just
physically stronger/better at grinding with a mortar
and pestle; 3) Maybe they would have used their
feet? Finally, desperate, we make a final pass
over the almonds with a knife, producing this very
roughly ground pile.
Boiling Onion, Take 2
Luckily, Julia had brought a backup
onion.
Sops?
Makeshift
“sops”
Onion Frying and Re-Boiling
Yum....
Soaking the Sops
Final Result
Postscript: Almond Milk for drinking….
Conclusion
