"Almond Cake (Bocca di dama)"

Granulated sugar, nine ounces
Very fine Hungarian flour, five ounces
Sweet almonds with some bitter ones, two ounces
Six whole eggs and three egg yolks
Taste of lemon peel

"After skinning the almonds in warm water and drying them will, grind or better pound them well together with a tablespoonful of sugar and mix well with the flour.



Put the rest of the sugar in a deep dish with the egg yolks and the grated lemon peel (just a taste) and stir with a ladle for a quarter of an hour.



In another dish beat the six whites of egg and when they have become quite thick mix them with other ingredients stirring slowly everything together.



To bake place the mixture in a baking-tin greased evenly with butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar and flour."

This recipe was taken from the copyright-free cookbook entitled, "The Italian Cook Book: the Art of Eating Well, Practical Recipes of the Italian Cuisine" written by Mrs. Maria Gentile; it was published in 1919 by the Italian Book Co. (New York). The recipe is no. 189. For the entire cookbook see www.archive.org. ................. P.S. I attempted to do this recipe and found it rather intimidating. First of all, I couldn't find bitter almonds in any the local shops in my neighborhood, so obviously I couldn't include them. Second of all, I did not have access to "fine Hungarian flour." I assumed "fine Hungarian flour" is similar to "fine Italian flour ("00), but I couldn't find that either in my neighborhood, so I used cake flour. However, following the directions in the cookbook I did not come up with a cake batter, but rather what looked like a cookie batter. I suspect the end result should look a bit similar to a "pan di spagne" batter, as the sugar and eggs are basically creamed. Nonetheless because the ingredients used in this recipe are rather expensive I did not want to take the risk of having a cake that would turn out badly (possibly because I failed to understand the directions). So I improvised. I used 1 cup lightly roasted ground blanched almonds, 6 extra large eggs, divided, 2 cups cake flour, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon almond extract and the finely grated zest of 1 small lemon. Basically, I turned the recipe to one I was much more familiar with and it worked out really well. Because I did not follow the original recipe I can't say what it would taste like, nor whether it works. Still, I did manage to come up with a nice looking cake (tasted real good with strawberries and whipped cream) that I brought to my friend's daughter's graduation party. Photo and notes: Mary Melfi.

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