Frederick Nutt's Millefruit Biscuits on a small English bobbin stemmed salver from the 1760s. The raised edge around the top of the salver is perfect for stopping small sweetmeats from slipping, making it very easy to construct miniature pyramids.
From the seventeenth century onwards English cookery and confectionery texts abound with recipes for a family of biscuits which contain no flour. The ingredients are held together with a simple mixture of powdered sugar and egg white. Base ingredients include everything from dried jasmine flowers, slivered almonds to slices of candied peel. One variant, known as bane bread or bean bread consists of little piles of flaked almonds held together with an orange or rosewater icing and baked with a generous scattering of caraway comfits. These biscuits were usually baked on wafer paper. They blister a little while cooking and sometimes spread out a little beyond their brittle bounds, but they crisp-up once cold and hold their crispness for weeks. They remind me very much of the Italian bruti et buoni to which I am sure they are related. The London confectioner Frederick Nutt, one time apprentice to the great Domenico Negri gives a number of recipes, which may in the long run have originated from the Italian peninsula. One, in his Complete Confectioner of 1789 called 'almond faggots' is very close to modern Umbrian bruti et buoni. These delicate crunchy biscuits have a feather-light texture and are redolent of orange flowers. They were probably eaten with sweet dessert wines.However, Nutt's most interesting recipe in this genre is for a biscuit consisting of little morsels of citrus peel, which he calls millefruit biscuits. As well as the finely chopped preserved peel of oranges and lemons, they also contain angelica, slivered sweet almonds and bitter almonds all held together with egg white and orange flower water icing. I have put his original recipe below. Try it. These delicate biscuits are easy and quick to make.
Nutt's book, first published in the year of the French Revolution was in its first few editions issued anonymously, the author being named at first as 'A Person'/ Although Nutt's book is forgotten by most now, in its day it proved to be a best seller and went into a number of editions. Its easy to follow recipes have a professional ring about them. It certainly affords a remarkable glimpse into the sophistication of late Georgian dessert food.
Angelica is often used as a decoration, but here is an essential element in this biscuit. I use apricot kernels instead of bitter almonds.
The nuts, peels and angelica are mixed together with the icing
A teaspoon full is dropped onto paper - I use rice paper - and are spotted with cochineal with a small paint brush
They bake to a fine light brown and crisp up once they are cool
The finished biscuits. They are wonderfully crisp and have a perfumed, archaic citrus peel flavour