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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

I knew that all the flavor in almond extract cannot come from hydrogen 
cyanide, because it boils at a very low temperature and would be lost in 
a cookie.

Maude Grieve's herbal is now online at www.botanical.com.  She says 
under Constituents that the essental oil of bitter almonds is called 
benzaldehyde (the name I couldn't remember).  They also contain cyanide 
in fairly great amounts, like all seeds in that family.  But it's the 
former that's remaining in your cookie.  I looked in the table of 
compounds in the CRC Manual and it gives boiling point (at sea level) as 
178 C for benzaldehyde and 26 C (about room temperature) for cyanide.

Why is the plant producing two compounds that smell alike, one poisonous 
and other not?  The answer can only be that benzaldehyde is a *poison 
mimic*.  The genus Amygdalus has evolved in response to predation by 
small mammals living in its central Asian homeland, to make them believe 
there's more cyanide in the seed than there really is.  Why not just 
produce all cyanide?  The answer can only be that either too much 
cyanide is harmful to the seed's own tissues, or that it costs less ATP 
to synthesize benzaldehyde and so it gives more apparent bang for the 
buck than real cyanide.

BTW, I'd recommend 'Hall's Hardy' almond for your new place, and that 
you ignore what you might have read online about it.  The thing to do is 
to try just one near some peaches for pollination.  At the least you'll 
get perhaps the most beautiful flowering "Prunus" you've ever seen, with 
big, voluptuous flowers cast in a deep pink.  If you like the taste you 
can plant more, as I'm planning on doing.  The flavor reminds me of a 
non-bitter almond that nevertheless have the same strong aroma of 
benzaldehyde as bitter ones do, and a smidgen of bitterness that seems 
to vary from place to place.  There is no guarantee of their cyanide 
content, but I realize now that when they're toasted it will become 
negligible, and salt or honey both help mask the minor trace of 
bitterness.  I had the most wonderful raw almond butter recently, but 
next time I think I'll roast the kernels first.

Bill