Almond extract is the extract from almond.So is bitter almond extract and its active ingredient is amygdalin.

Natural almond extract is not made from the edible almonds that are farmed here (Prunus dulcis), rather, it’s usually made from closely-related bitter almonds (Prunus amygdalus), and sometimes from more surprising sources, like cinnamon bark.  The chemical that we recognize so definitively as almond flavoring is benzaldehyde, and it’s found in several plants both in and out of the Prunus genus.  If you have a bottle of “natural almond extract” at home, chances are that yours, like mine, is a suspension of bitter almond oil in either glycerin or ethanol.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote poetically about the scent of bitter almonds and the fate of unrequited love as a lead-in to murder by cyanide poisoning.  And in bitter almond oil as in a tragic romance, the sweet and the toxic are inextricably entangled.  Benzaldehyde is made by the decomposition of amygdalin (named for Prunus amygdalus, and in turn responsible for the bitterness that gives bitter almonds their common name).  The other decomposition products are glucose (sweet) and hydrogen cyanide (toxic).

As with so many other useful or toxic chemicals that we get from plants, the evolutionary utility of amygdalin to the plant is for defense, specifically as a deterrent to grazers from eating the valuable seed as well as the dispensable fruit.  Inside the cells of the almond kernel, amygdalin is sequestered from the enzyme that breaks it down: amygdalin hydrolase.  Crushing, as happens when the plant is grazed upon, brings the enzyme and amygdalin together, and cyanide is produced as a result–as much as 4-9mg per almond.  If the bitter taste of amygdalin doesn’t deter the grazer, the light-headedness, weakness, and racing heart that follows as the cyanide out-competes oxygen for the grazer’s hemoglobin probably will.  It freaks me out a little to remember that, as children, my brother and I noticed that apricot kernels looked exactly like almonds, and tried a few before deciding that the resemblance stopped at the visual level and they were too nasty to keep eating (spoiler alert: we lived).

#BitterAlmondExtract #Amygdalin