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Dessert

Syrup of Almonds — Sirop De or Gent.

A syrup made by blending blanched almonds, water, sugar, and orange‑flower water, then boiling to a pearl consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Syrup of Almonds — Sirop De or Gent.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond milk

  1. Blanch the almonds and place them in cold water as you finish each batch.

  2. Once all almonds are blanched, pound them in a marble mortar, adding a little orange-flower water to prevent oiling.

  3. Continue to pound until they form a paste, adding ½ pint more water as needed.

  4. Strain the mixture through a tamis cloth, twisting tightly to extract the almond milk into a basin.

  5. Pound the remaining almond solids with some of the water and strain again until all milk is extracted.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the mixture.

  2. Boil the sugar until it reaches the crack stage.

  3. Add the almond milk to the sugar.

  4. Reduce until it reaches a pearl consistency.

  5. Strain.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 of almond milk and the nutty flavour of the syrup.
Bitter almonds
Add a concentrated almond aroma that gives the syrup its characteristic bitter-almond note.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, once boiled and reduced, gives it body and thickness.
Orange-flower water
Adds aroma and, added during pounding, helps keep the almond paste from releasing its oil.

The step that matters

Reduce until it reaches a pearl consistency. Sugar syrup thickens quickly as water evaporates, and stopping at the right concentration determines whether the syrup sets properly. Overcooking makes it too thick, while underreduction leaves it thin and prone to spoiling.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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