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Drink

Orgeat of Montpellier

A sweet almond and barley syrup flavored with orange flower, served diluted in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Orgeat of Montpellier

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley and almonds

  1. Wash and soak the barley in water, then separate the grains.

  2. Tie the barley in muslin and boil it in a pot with 1 quart of water for 4 hours.

  3. Add the almonds to the pot and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Remove the barley and almonds, then pound them together in a mortar.

Strain and make the syrup

  1. Mix the pounded mixture with the water.

  2. Strain the mixture through linen. Repeat the straining.

  3. Add 1 pound of powdered sugar to the thick water and boil to make a syrup.

  4. Test the syrup by dropping some on a plate; it should remain like paste when done.

  5. Remove from heat.

Flavor and serve

  1. Flavor with orange-flower or other flavoring.

  2. Bottle and store for use.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of the syrup with fresh water in a decanter. Shake well.

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. Barley + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

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

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

  3. Barley + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. 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

Barley
Its starch thickens the liquid and gives the orgeat its body.
Sweet almonds
Supply the rich, creamy base and the characteristic nutty flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and, when boiled, thickens it into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the paste stage. Boiling the sugar too little leaves the syrup thin and unstable, while boiling too long makes it stiff and sugary. Testing a drop on a plate shows when it has reached the right concentration.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, 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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