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Orgeat Paste

A sweet almond paste mixed with sugar and orange‑flower water to make a syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Orgeat Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch almonds in boiling water, then remove skins.

  2. Place almonds in cold water to keep them white.

  3. Soak the almonds for a day.

  4. Pound the soaked almonds finely, adding orange‑flower water gradually.

  5. Weigh the almond paste.

Make the paste

  1. Add 1¼ lbs of sugar per pound of paste.

  2. Clarify the sugar and boil it to the soft crack stage.

  3. Mix the boiled sugar with the almond paste using a spatula.

  4. Transfer the mixture to an earthen pan to cool.

  5. Once cool, pound the paste in a mortar until elastic.

Shape

  1. Dust a marble slab with sugar.

  2. Place the paste on the slab.

  3. Shape the paste into tablets or sticks.

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

Almonds
Provide the bulk of the paste, giving the syrup its body and nutty flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and, once boiled, binds the almonds into a firm, elastic mass.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that defines the flavour of the orgeat.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to the soft crack stage. Sugar boiled too little stays runny and will not set the paste, while overboiling makes it hard and brittle when mixed with the almonds. Reaching the soft crack stage gives the right concentration to bind the paste while keeping it workable.

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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