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Syrup D'orgeat

A sweet almond syrup flavored with orange flower water and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Syrup D'orgeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Shell and peel the almonds, then pound them finely.

  2. Moisten the almonds with water little by little until it forms a paste.

  3. Add the orange flower water to the almond paste.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, combine the sugar and water, then add the lemon juice.

  2. Cook the mixture until it thickens into a syrup.

Steep and bottle

  1. Pour the syrup over the almond paste and let it stand for several days.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. 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, nutty flavor and creamy texture of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives it body once cooked into a thick liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the almond richness.
Orange flower water
Contributes a floral aroma that defines the character of the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the sugar syrup until it thickens. Cooking the sugar and water concentrates the syrup so it keeps well and holds its body. Undercooked syrup stays thin and is more prone to spoiling, while the almond paste needs to be fully steeped in it to release its flavor.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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