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Another Way to Make Orgeat

A sweet almond syrup made with Jordan almonds, orange-flower water, spring water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Orgeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond milk

  1. Finely pound the Jordan almonds with a little orange-flower water.

  2. Gradually add 2 quarts of spring water.

  3. Sweeten with double-refined sugar to taste.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a napkin.

  2. Pour into quart bottles and chill.

  3. Make it on the day you plan to use 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. 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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Jordan almonds
Provide the main nutty almond flavour and the fats and proteins that give the milk body.
Double-refined sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitter almond flavour.
Spring water
Forms the liquid base and carries the almond flavour into the syrup.
Orange-flower water
Adds a light floral aroma that complements the almonds.

The step that matters

Gradually add the spring water. Adding the water slowly to finely pounded almonds helps the almond fats and proteins disperse evenly into the liquid, giving a smoother, more stable milk instead of a grainy separated one.

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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