Why doesn’t Amaretto give you cyanide poisoning?

[G.A.Pster]

Amaretto is made from bitter almonds and or apricot kernels.

Both of which contain amygdalin which when eaten is broken down in the gut into hydrogen cyanide which is toxic.

So, why doesn’t Amaretto give you cyanide poisoning?

[Jragon]

According to a random webpage I found:

The bitterness of bitter almond and apricot kernels comes from the high amount of amygdalin, which is found in much lesser amounts in sweet varieties. The breakdown products of this chemical produce benzaldehyde, which gives the cherry-like almond flavor. It also produces cyanide, which is why bitter almonds are regulated in the U.S. The flavor is much more intense, however, and you do not have to worry about cyanide in amaretto, since, similar to the effect of cooking, the alcohol infusion eliminates any traces of cyanide, and, in fact, in traces of nuts at all.

Amaretto Liqueur

This sounds plausible to me, but I know basically nothing about toxicology, food science, or chemistry.

[Trinopus]

Apple seeds, too, have cyanide or cyanide precursors. I once phoned my local poison information center to ask if it’s okay to eat apples, seeds and all, and they told me I’d have to drink a whole apple-seed milkshake before it’d make me sick.

I’m guessing almonds are the same way. You’d really have to binge on 'em before the poison started to matter.

[Isilder]

@Trinopus

they told me I’d have to drink a whole apple-seed milkshake before it’d make me sick.

Kind of Correct. They don’t mean a apple-seed flavoured milk shake… They mean a milk shake cup of apple seed or apple seed flour.
You couldn’t get it down …

You’d feel sick and lethargic before you managed to get a fifth of the way to a lethal dose… your body will ensure you don’t finish such a lethal meal.
Your body has enzymes to deal with cyanide and the “antidote” thiosulfate helps these enzymes work faster…
Normally the enzymes work fast enough to get rid of cyanide in the few almonds, apricots and apple seeds , etc that you consume.

[Hector_St_Clare]

Seeds of many of the plants in the rose family (Apple, cherry, almond, apricot, peach) contain some level of cyanogens. Almonds used to, then they were intensively selected to be less bitter, which massively reduced the cyanogen content.

I actually once accidentally almost poisoned myself eating apricot kernels. (Some varieties are low amygdalin and are eaten, this happened to be an inedible variety, which I didn’t realize until my mouth started going numb).

[Hector_St_Clare]

@Isilder

Kind of Correct. They don’t mean a apple-seed flavoured milk shake… They mean a milk shake cup of apple seed or apple seed flour.
You couldn’t get it down …

You’d feel sick and lethargic before you managed to get a fifth of the way to a lethal dose… your body will ensure you don’t finish such a lethal meal.
Your body has enzymes to deal with cyanide and the “antidote” thiosulfate helps these enzymes work faster…
Normally the enzymes work fast enough to get rid of cyanide in the few almonds, apricots and apple seeds , etc that you consume.

It’s not so much that the thiosulfate helps the enzymes work faster, per se (well, it’s technically true, i guess, but thiosulfate is not an activator or cofactors). Thiosulfate is the substrate, the enzymes use it to convert cyanide to a less toxic thiocyanate.

[JR_Brown]

Poking around the web suggests that the kernels can be pre-treated to remove the cyanide precursors; alternately, the liqueur might just be artificially flavored; the main component of the bitter-almond taste, benzaldehyde, is cheap and nontoxic. In the US, if you buy bitter almond flavoring for cooking, it’s likely mostly benzaldehyde; real bitter almond oil is highly regulated in the US because of the toxicity.

[engineer_comp_geek]

As was mentioned upthread, your body can tolerate cyanide in small amounts. If you eat a few apple seeds, no biggie. I don’t know how much cyanide ends up in Amaretto, but as long as it is in similarly low amounts it’s not a problem.

There is one case on record that I’m aware of where someone managed to kill themselves with apple seeds. But it wasn’t just a couple of seeds. A guy saved up apple seeds in a bowl for a fairly long time, then ate all (or at least a large number) of the seeds all in one sitting. So it is technically possible to give yourself cyanide poisoning from apple seeds. It just takes an ungodly number of apple seeds to do it.