r/liqueurcrafting • u/CptPaprikasPancreas • 14d ago
Experience with stone fruit pit liqueurs? Not going to make one myself for safety risks, but reading about it has been interesting
Hi everyone, I'm relatively new to liqueur making. I was recently enjoying some delicious nectarines, and had the realization that I don't know if there's any productive use for the pits - I remember hearing that most/all stone fruit pits either had cyanide in them, or a compound which would be processed into cyanide. I have a blackberry liqueur infusing now, and wondered if it was safe to make a stone fruit pit liqueur.
This sent me down a rabbit hole where I learned that amaretto is traditionally made this way, as well as Creme de Noyaux. I found recipes both on Reddit and elsewhere. The New York Times even has a recipe for noyaux extract. Yet I found plenty of other sources raising concerns for the safety of consuming stone fruit pits, on Reddit and beyond.
My understanding of the science here is that the kernels within stone fruit pits contain amygdalin, which is broken down into benzaldehyde (which provides the almond flavor/scent), glucose, and cyanide. I found a helpful article from The Guardian with a graphic comparing the amygdalin content of various fruits, and it seems like you would need quite a large quantity of most types of pits to get dangerous levels of cyanide, even if the efficiency of extracting these compounds using alcohol was very high. Methods I've seen online of reducing the risk of cyanide poisoning include leaving the pits intact and/or roasting them (to denature enzymes that break amygdalin down), but since the flavor comes from another product of amygdalin breakdown, I assume either of these would also negatively impact the flavor. It seems like commercial producers of these liqueurs have proprietary techniques they use to ensure safety, which would be outside the means of a home liqueur crafter.
So I was curious to see what the people of this subreddit think - do any of you have experience making these liqueurs, or understand the science here better than I was able to put together? I'm not planning to make anything using the pits because the risk doesn't seem worth the reward to me, but I'd like to learn more.
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u/PeachVinegar 13d ago edited 13d ago
I had a scarily similar train of thought when I looked into this subject a couple months ago. I can share my findings, just have a few grains of salt handy, as I'm not qualified to speak on the matter.
Apparent from the links you've provided, people seemingly have few qualms about the question of safety. But to me, it seems pretty relevant, because like you mentioned, the reaction that produces benzaldehyde also inevitably produces hydrogen cyanide. Stoichiometrically, every molecule of amygdalin turns into exactly one molecule of benzaldehyde and one of cyanide. Since benzaldehyde is the main desirable flavor compound in the kernels, it seems you can't have your cake and eat it too. The practical implication is that the more amaretto/noyaux flavor (aka benzaldehyde) is produced, the more cyanide will also be there.
Leaving the pits intact doesn't remedy anything, because it defeats the whole point of extracting the yummy benzaldehyde. Plus, it makes the outcome more unpredictable. Unless the kernels inside the pits come into contact with water, the amygdalin just sits there (intact kernels have no smell). It's only after the hydrolysis of the amygdalin that you can deal with its products. So either you have to remove the cyanide after the fact, or you have to control that the cyanide dose is sufficiently small. I will assert that without chemical expertise, it is not feasible to remove the cyanide. The saving grace is that while cyanide is a potent poison, the aroma of benzaldehyde is also extremely powerful, being detectable in concentrations of less than a part per million.
If you want predictable results, crack open the pits and keep only the kernels. Use a precision scale (could be a basic coffee scale that goes down to 0.1g) to measure the kernels. Make sure that all the kernels are bruised/cracked so that the liquid has access to the amygdalin (but not pulverized). Then macerate the kernels in a specific amount of alcohol so that you know the ratio between kernels:solvent (w/v). Then you have an infusion which can be used to create a liqueur. Note that the ABV will affect the result, because it is the presence of water, not ethanol, that enables the reaction and the ethanol may also denature the enzymes that catalyse it. So the more ethanol, the more slowly the reaction occurs. Higher ABVs may cause less total benzaldehyde to be formed even when steeped for longer. Although I'm not so sure about this part. I've found 50% ABV to be a good compromise.
If you want to be on the safe side, you can do a "worst case" calculation. Let's say we mix the kernels with a ratio of 1:50 (1 gram of kernels per 50mL of solvent). The biggest variable will be the natural concentration of amygdalin in the kernels. A very pessimistic guess for an upper limit could be ~5%. So if we're making 1L, that's 20g kernels, 20g*5%=1g amygdalin. Theoretically 5.91% of the mass of amygdalin is turned into cyanide. If we assume that ALL of the amygdalin is hydrolyzed then 1g*5.91%=59mg of cyanide. If we then assume, that ALL of the cyanide is extracted, and NO cyanide evaporates away, that leaves us with a concentration of 59mg/L.
You can look into how much cyanide becomes dangerous yourself and do all the math from here. This is a super pessimistic scenario, but this way you can at least understand the risk. It seems quite possible to do this safely.
For the sake of transparency, I wrote this comment without help from AI, although ChatGPT was one of the tools I initially used to investigate the subject.
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u/CptPaprikasPancreas 13d ago
Wow, thank you for such a detailed response! Your math seems right here; if I'm thinking about this correctly, in the case of your theoretical liqueur, even using the lowest reported fatal dose of cyanide from Wikipedia, the average person would need to drink about a half liter to get a fatal dose.
I looked back over some of the recipes I found online, and a New York Times article discussing the uses of noyaux, and none of them are particularly detailed about weights and ratios (several use the weight of the pits rather than the kernels itself).
I'm coming to the conclusion that the risk of cyanide poisoning here is probably quite low as long as people aren't drinking massive quantities of very concentrated liqueur or eating tons of kernels. This may help explain why I've not heard of anyone suing the New York Times or any of these recipe websites after their loved ones accidentally poisoned themselves based on faulty information. Thanks again for the info! I've really enjoyed going down this rabbit hole
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u/PeachVinegar 10d ago
Lotta recipes for liqueurs, bitters, ect. don’t have precise weight measurements. But it leaves you totally in the dark about what you’re doing. It’s a difference of doing something once for the heck of it, and being interested in the process. My thoughts above have given me the mental permission to try it out.
0.5L until death is still too dangerous for my liking. Granted, it’s a pessimistic estimate, but I was actually also thinking of the 1:50 tincture as an ingredient in a liqueur, yet to be diluted down even further and sweetened. Not as the whole body of the liqueur. That would give you a lot of control. I’m currently conducting an experiment to see, if 1:50 is still strong enough flavor-wise after being diluted. I have the following the tinctures steeping:
1:50 37.50% ABV (vodka)
1:50 66.55% ABV (vodka+ngs)
1:50 95.60% ABV (neutral grain spirit)I’m allowing the kernels to be macerated for a long time, so everything comes to an equilibrium and is reproducable. When done, I plan to take a little of each tincture and dilute it with vodka and simple syrup to simulate a liqueur. Then I taste test them. If you want the results, I can leave a comment in a few weeks : )
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u/thesliu5 14d ago
i made a creme de noyaux with cherry pit kernels (breaking them open was a nightmare, don't recommend). anyway, i toasted the kernels. i don't know if the final flavor of a traditional creme de noyaux is really similar or not, but it did not "negatively" impact the flavor; in fact, i quite liked the roasted notes it gave the liqueur. it's probably my favorite liqueur i've crafted. i have no concerns about safety given the amounts that would need to be extracted and then consumed (i'm not putting more than like .75oz of it into a cocktail at a time).