Why it works: Almond and syrup work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 746 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Orgeat Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the syrup
Pound the sweet and bitter almonds very fine with some water.
Boil 2 quarts of syrup until it reaches a blow stage.
Make the orgeat
Mix the ground almonds into the boiling syrup and stir continuously over the fire until it becomes very stiff.
Once cooled, transfer to pots and cover with paper tied with a bladder.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Almond + syruptop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together746 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the syrup.
- Bitter almonds
- Add a concentrated almond aroma in small amount.
- Syrup
- Sweetens the mixture and gives it a liquid base.
The step that matters
Stirring the almonds into the boiling syrup. Stirring continuously over the fire keeps the ground almonds from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan. The mixture thickens noticeably as it cooks, so constant stirring keeps the texture even.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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