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Orgeat Syrup

A sweet almond syrup made with almonds, water, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orgeat Syrup

Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Orgeat Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond milk

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds in boiling water until the skins peel off easily, then transfer to cold water.

  2. Pick the almonds and place them in a clean marble mortar.

  3. Pound the almonds with the lemon juice, adding ½ pint of spring water gradually until smooth.

  4. Mix the almond paste with another ½ pint of water and strain through a cloth, collecting the almond milk in a basin.

  5. Return the almond paste to the mortar, pound again with a little more water, strain, and add to the collected almond milk.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the sugar and boil it until it reaches a crack stage.

  2. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the almond milk, then return to heat and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir continuously with a skimmer until the mixture cools to prevent separation when bottled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 and rich almond flavour of the syrup.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharp, intense almond aroma that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives it body as it thickens when boiled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the syrup fresh.

The step that matters

Stir the almond milk into the hot syrup and keep stirring as it cools. Almond milk is an emulsion that can separate when heated or left to stand. Stirring constantly while it cools keeps the suspended oils and solids evenly distributed so the syrup stays smooth when bottled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe 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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