Almond Hedgehog- 18th Century

This is a fun one. For Christmas I was gifted a reprint of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, which was originally published in 1765. It’s actually a super extensive cookbook with all sorts of recipes. After a quick page-through I decided the first thing I had to make was this almond hedgehog. Because obviously.

Initial thoughts on the recipe

To make hedge-hog.

TAKE two quarts of sweet blanched almonds, beat them well in a mortar, with a little canary and orange-flower water, to keep them from oiling. Make them into a stiff paste, then beat in the yolks of twelve eggs, leave out five of the whites, put to it a pint of cream, sweeten it with sugar, put in half a pound of sweet butter melted, set it on a furnace or slow fire, and keep continually stirring till it is stiff enough to be made into the form of a hedge hog, then stick it full of blanched almonds slit and stuck up like the bristles of a hedge-hog, then put it into a dish. Take a pint of cream and the yolks of four eggs beat up, and mix with the cream: sweeten to your palate, and keep them stirring over a slow fire all the time till it is hot, then pour it into your dish round the hedge-hog; let it stand till it is cold, and serve it up.

Or you may make a fine hartshorn jelly, and pour into the dish, which will look very pretty. You may eat wine and sugar with it, or eat it without.

Or cold cream sweetened, with a glass of white wine in it and the juice of a Seville orange, and pour into the dish. It will be pretty for change.

This is a pretty side-dish at a second course, or in the middle for supper, or in a grand dessert. Plump two currants for the eyes.

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, 1765

Honestly when I first saw the recipe I thought it was going to be about cooking hedgehogs. Like you know, the animals.

In my defense, this book has honest-to-goodness recipes for pigeons, and the title of the recipe as it is written is simply “to make hedgehog.” So I mean, come on. It wasn’t too far of a leap.

Once I was actually read the ingredients it called for, I was relieved to find that even in the 18th century, eating hedgehogs wasn’t commonplace.

Once that misunderstanding was out of the way, this recipe sounded pretty charming. Apparently, making food into cute shapes has been a thing for a long time!

Trying it out

First things first, this recipe calls for 2 quarts of almonds and twelve eggs. I don’t know what kind of fancy people were making this a few centuries ago, but have you seen the price of almonds? Given that I wasn’t hosting a party and I didn’t even know what this almond hedgehog tasted like, we were going to have to decrease this a bit. I ended up halving the recipe, which was more than plenty!

Another interesting ingredient in this recipe was “canary.” I imagined this recipe wasn’t actually calling for a songbird, so it was off to the internet. From what I could find, canary was the common term for a wine from the Canary Islands, usually white. My local liquor store didn’t have any Canary Islands wines, so I settled for a white wine from Spain.

My fiance and I started out beating the almonds in a mortar and pestle for fun, but I can tell you right now that it is a highly inefficient method (although maybe that’s also because my mortar and pestle is smaller, meant more for spices than for large quantities of almonds). So we did one cup’s worth of the almonds in a mortar and pestle, moistened with wine and orange-flower water, and the remaining 3 cups we ground up in the blender with the additional liquid.

Because we just added the wine and orange-flower water in increments as we pulverized the almonds, it’s hard to say exactly how much was used. I’d say it was about 1/3 of the wine bottle and 1/3 of the 10 oz orange blossom water.

Now on to cooking. I cooked this in a saucepan over medium/low heat. I didn’t really know what texture we were going for other than “able to be formed into shapes.” Once the mixture was fairly doughy and pulled away from the sides I removed it from the heat.

Decorating the hedgehog was the fun part. I bought slivered almonds instead of slicing all of them because I don’t hate myself and it took long enough with pre-sliced almonds. I forgot to soak the dried currants in water to plump them up, but I think even dried they work fine.

The recipe offers several options for the sauce, but I went with the first one (egg yolks, cream, and sugar) because it used ingredients I already had at home.

The verdict:

For me, this dish is more about the fun than the taste. It’s cute! As for what it tastes like, it’s basically a somewhat perfume-y almond paste. It’s not bad, though for my personal preference I probably could have made it a bit sweeter.

I struggle to come up with a similar modern dessert I could equate it to. It’s thicker than a pudding, and denser than a cake — not to mention there’s no flour. It’s kind of like if you took a thick almond paste and made it a dessert.

As for the sauce, I’m glad I went with the first one. It’s simple and creamy, which is a nice offset to the slight grittiness of the homemade almond paste. The cream also helps to balance out the airy perfume flavor the orange blossom lends.

Overall, this was an interesting dive into 18th century flavors and terms. I think our ancestors had more whimsy with food than we give them credit for! That said, while this was enjoyable enough, there are plenty of desserts I think I’d rather eat, so I’d rate this a pretty solid 3 out of 5.

Let me know if you try this out! I’m curious to see how everyone’s interpretation of an “almond hedgehog” might turn out.